


All My Roads Lead To You

by ErinPtah



Category: Fake News FPF, Fake News RPF, The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Emotional Infidelity, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sensory Overload, September 11 Attacks, Soul Bond, Spirit Animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-26
Updated: 2012-12-06
Packaged: 2017-11-17 02:29:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinPtah/pseuds/ErinPtah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Working off <a href="http://newskink-meme.livejournal.com/709.html?thread=726981">a kink meme prompt</a>: "AU where Sentinels and Guides are a normal part of life. "Stephen" is a Guide who has been repressing everything to do with empathy, and Jon is a Sentinel who Does Not Want that kind of responsibility. Naturally they bond pretty much at first sight and go on to become the most oddly-functioning couple ever."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The room was sparse and barely furnished. Cream-colored walls, low lights, no windows; one door, painted to match the walls and enamel. The only sound came from the heart monitor: not the traditional beeping, just a loud mechanical hum as the little green spikes rolled silently across the screen. On the other hand, the mattress felt like some kind of high-tech memory foam, which Jon didn't think most hospitals could afford.  
  
He was in a hospital, right?  
  
For about thirty seconds, he was certain he'd fallen into the plot of _Iron Man_. Terrorists had bombed his caravan and kidnapped him right out of the USO's hands, and now he was going to be held captive to avail them of his expertise in the field of dick jokes. Or something. No, that didn't make sense, he would have remembered a bombing and kidnapping...although, to be fair, he couldn't remember anything since winding down after his set and a batch of handshakes the night before.  
  
Jon tried to sit up. Definitely hospital pajamas: a solid pale blue, with snaps down the front of the shirt and cheap fabric that itched when it moved over his skin.  
  
"Mr. Stewart? Please lie down. How are you feeling?"  
  
"Bad," said Jon honestly. "Where am I?" And then, because the person who had spoken was nowhere in sight: "Where are _you?_ "  
  
"You're in the sensory overload ward of the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. My name is Nurse Barrister, and I'm right outside the door. Your attending physician and Kerry Rehnquist have been notified that you're awake, and will be joining us shortly."  
  
"Right." Jon sank back onto the memory foam. Kerry was his liaison (or "handler", if he felt like using the more personally demeaning term) from the USO, which made it more likely this was official and not some kind of elaborate terrorist deception. She would sort out...whatever this was. (Sensory overload? Had he had some kind of concussion? And how long did it take to fly from Afghanistan to Germany...?) "What happened?"  
  
"I'll be happy to answer your questions, Mr. Stewart, but first you need to answer a few for me. Who is the current President of the United States?"  
  
"Barack Obama."  
  
"What date do you think it is?"  
  
Unsettling though the question was, Jon gave the date after what he remembered as yesterday. "Is that right?"  
  
"Close." The nurse named a date two days later. "That's normal. You were sedated for the duration." Over Jon's spluttered protests ( _why_ had he been sedated, what was going on, what had his family been told?), he added, "There's a camera mounted on the ceiling, Can you point to it?"  
  
A fresh jolt of anxiety pumped through Jon's veins. Was he in _quarantine?_ The camera wasn't hidden or anything, just fixed in the corner to his left; he pointed, and glared, into the lens. "Enough! I'm conscious, I'm lucid, and I want to know what the _hell_ is going on here."  
  
"I appreciate your agitation, but please try to stay calm, Mr. Stewart," said Barrister. "You had a very serious episode, and your system will never recover if you don't relax. Is there a guide or guides you'd like us to have flown in?"  
  
This seemed like such a non sequitur (what, was he going to have a tour later?) that Jon flipped from scared and angry to baffled, and then into understanding. Oh. The nurse was talking about the capital-G kind. "Listen, I don't know where you're getting your information, but I'm not a Sentinel, okay? Whatever kind of 'episode' I'm supposed to have had, you've got the wrong diagnosis."  
  
"Mr. Stewart, all the lights in your room are off."  
  
"...wha?" Jon shook himself. "No they're not. How is the camera working, then?"  
  
"Infrared. And I'm not using a microphone," the nurse continued. "Your room is soundproofed except for the wall in between us, and it's not thin. An ordinary human, or a Sentinel in full control of their senses, wouldn't be able to hear me."  
  
"Um," said Jon.  
  
"It's standard procedure. We'll supply a Guide and monitor your senses to make sure you can bring them under control enough to get back to the States. In the meantime, for your safety, visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory stimulation are kept to a minimum."  
  
For the second time in two minutes, Jon lay back down. Even if he wasn't a Sentinel (and come on, what were the odds of it creeping up on him this late in life?), there was obviously something here for the doctors to deal with. "Well, you could have done a more thorough job," he said, settling on the nearest excuse to be irritable. "What did you make these PJs out of, sackcloth?"  
  
"Those pajamas," said Barrister, sounding kind of irritated himself now, "are 250 thread count cotton."  
  
  
~*~  
  
  
 _Two days earlier..._  
  
  
It had been Kerry Rehnquist who gave Tracey the call. When Tracey saw who it was, she handed off the demonstration on making shadowboxes for five-year-olds to an employee (they all knew where Jon was spending his weekend) and took off as charmingly as possible for the back room. "Kerry! This is...unexpected."  
  
"Mrs. Stewart, I just want you to know there's nothing to worry about. Something's come up, but your husband is safe, unharmed, and in good hands."  
  
That took a considerable edge off the panic Tracey had been working on. "That's good. That's great! Why did you call?"  
  
"There was...a mortar attack near the base. None dead, eight injured. Jon was...in a position to see the explosion."  
  
Tracey's heart dropped to somewhere around her knees. "What? How?" she demanded, pacing between the shelf of paints and half a dozen jumbo rolls of colored paper. "He wasn't supposed to be anywhere near combat! That was the deal. That's your job!"  
  
"We think Jon's a Sentinel."  
  
That made Tracey sit down. Hard. "A what?"  
  
"A human with enhanced sensory abilities, traditionally serving as protector of their town or—"  
  
"I know what a Sentinel is! I just...I can't...Jon? That can't be right."  
  
"I realize this must come as a shock, especially because of his age, but—"  
  
"It comes as a shock because we were in Manhattan on 9/11," said Tracey sharply. "If being evacuated off an island on a tugboat with fifty other scared people while the towers were falling wasn't enough of a trauma to awaken him as a Sentinel, how is a single bombing supposed to do it?"  
  
For the first time, Kerry's answer wasn't quick in coming. "Mrs. Stewart, I can only tell you what I know," she said, sounding tired. "Jon had an extreme, sudden-onset aversion to sound and light. One of the Sentinels on-base recognized the symptoms from her own awakening, and her Guide was able to talk him down enough to be sedated. We're in the air right now, and will get a full diagnosis once we reach the hospital, all right? The medical people on the plane are too busy with two burn victims and an amputee to deal with the guy who's physically fine, just has to be kept asleep."  
  
It struck Tracey that this probably wasn't something the USO dealt with a lot. The Army, sure; there were always soldiers finding Sentinel abilities stimulated into gear on their first tours, to the point where kids with big dreams of being "superheroes" would enlist in hopes of making it happen. But the people who shuffled celebrities between bases to sing songs and give handshakes? "You'll keep me up-to-date, right? And call me as soon as he can talk?"  
  
"Of course, ma'am. That's my job," said Kerry. "I have the short list you worked out of people to get in touch with. Is there anyone you'd like me to add to it?"  
  
Tracey conjured up the list in her mind. Some Comedy Central rep, a couple of people on the show, Jon's mother...they hadn't put Stephen on it. "Yes...no," she decided. Kerry wasn't being paid enough to handle Stephen. "Nothing. I'll take care of it. You keep an eye on Jon."  
  
  
~*~  
  
  
Stephen was on the tennis court at his country club when he got the call. Or, more precisely, he was being thrown off of the tennis court, after yelling at the staff member who refilled the ball machine until she called the manager.  
  
"We don't appreciate our patrons harassing the help," the manager had informed Stephen. Then, over Stephen's protests: "Can't you even tell how upset she was?"  
  
Of course he couldn't. Once you started acknowleding other people's sadness, then you started feeling sad yourself, and wasn't Stephen's mood that day already bad enough? (He put it down to the _Report_ being off for the whole weekend.)  
  
The manager, unmoved by this ironclad logic, sent Stephen on his way. He was on the point of calling his driver when a familar ringtone co-opted his phone: the Jon Stewart one, which was weird, until he remembered that he used the same tune for Lady Stewart. "Hello! Is Jon dead? And if he is, can I have eleven o'clock?"  
  
"...Stephen, that's a terrible thing to say."  
  
"Well, I wouldn't say it if he were _really_ dead, _obviously_ ," huffed Stephen. "So why are you calling?"  
  
"He's not dead..."  
  
"That's what I just said."  
  
"...but he's been hurt. I mean, he's not physically injured, he's in shock. They're taking him to a hospital — he should be better soon — do you want me to keep you updated?"  
  
A cold chill ran down Stephen's spine. "How soon is 'soon'?"  
  
"I...I don't know, exactly. We'll find out."  
  
"A day? A week? Who's going to host _The Daily Show?_ Are we going to be _off the air?_ "  
  
"I don't know why I bother," said Lady Stewart. "If you decide to show any sign of caring about your best friend, call me back."  
  
And she hung up. Rude. Stephen wished she were in a country club of his so he could throw her out.  
  
At least this explained one thing: his bad mood. Clearly, Stephen's gut knew something was wrong, and had made him extra surly. Maybe the woman who handled his balls hadn't even been doing it wrong at all.  
  
Instead of his driver, Stephen made a quick call to his favorite cab company, then sashayed back into the club. He could squeeze in a gentlemanly apology while waiting for the car to show up. Then, off to the airport!  
  
  
~*~  
  
  
The first Guide provided at Landstuhl, a fellow American, was way too touchy-feely for Jon to be comfortable. It wasn't a latent homophobia thing (yeah, he'd had that once, but if it hadn't been cured by the time he got invited to do a bit in bed with George Clooney, it sure was afterward). It just rubbed him the wrong way, that was all. As if the guy expected Sentinels, or supposed-Sentinels, to appreciate any kind of touching just because it came from a Guide.  
  
He had breakfast alone. Some kind of flavorless oatmeal mush. He tried to eat with Kerry, but his brain latched on to the sound of her chewing and he couldn't make himself ignore it. Thank goodness his new instincts were good at tuning out sensations his own body generated, or he would have been too queasy to keep it down.  
  
The second Guide was a no-nonsense German woman with multiple umlauts in her name and a stiffness that suggested she hadn't touched another human since 1982. She ran Jon through a series of exercises, got him to the point of tolerating normal fluorescent lights, then put on a radio for half an hour. It was playing, as far as Jon could tell, a local football match; as it wore on, he started to suspect he had already passed the test, and she just wanted to hear who won. It was all worthwhile in the end, though, when she pronounced him ready for Skype.  
  
It was the wee hours of the morning in New York, but Tracey got the kids out of bed. They yawned and said sleepy hellos. Jon told them he loved them and would see them soon, all the while silently cheering. They were fine. His wife had visibly been worried, but any trauma from Daddy's harrowing and mysterious absence had passed the kids right by.  
  
"If it's not a Sentinel thing, it sure feels like it," he admitted, once they were falling back asleep in Tracey's lap. "The Guide over there, she's on loan from the hospital..." He nodded to the Guide, now watching sternly from the side of the room, and fought down the urge to make a joke about being experimented on by Germans. This was not the time. "...she's taking me through, uh, I guess basic training, and it's helping."  
  
"I did some research," offered Tracey. "Apparently there are a lot of situations where latent senses can be awakened, and a couple of documented cases where a person only went Sentinel after going through two or three of them."  
  
"Huh."  
  
Neither of them wanted to invite the results of certainty down on their heads. There were responsibilities when you went Sentinel, after all, even if it was only with one or two senses. Things were expected of you. It was like being a firefighter, or a soldier, except you didn't get to choose; it was handed to you by biology, and that was that.  
  
"Listen, I hate to talk shop," said Jon, changing the subject, "but they haven't let me use the Internet yet...did they go ahead and tape today? How did it go?"  
  
"Oh, no you don't. You're still on vacation." She tried to laugh it off; Jon pretended not to notice the strain in her eyes. "They're feeding you okay, right? Looks like someone managed to get you to wear color, at least...."  
  
Her eyes were really the most remarkable color. The computer didn't do it justice, obviously. But the pixels did their best, tiny little squares mapping to the right shades of brown. Jon could get lost even in the digital version.  
  
He stared at the individual pixels, trying to separate each hue out and match it with the one in his memory....  
  
  
  
  
The laptop slammed shut, snapping him out of his reverie.  
  
Only then did he realize that the Guide had been saying something: _He will be fine, madam, but this cannot continue right now._ And before that...had she been saying his name? Had Tracey?  
  
"What just happened?" he said, voice rasping, blinking as he tried to restore his focus.  
  
"The trance. The 'zone out'. You will do more drills. We will fix."  
  
"Hey!" exclaimed Jon as she took the laptop away. "Let me have that! Just for a minute. Just let me email her. She should know I'm not still...zoned out."  
  
"Too dangerous," said the Guide instantly. "Later. As a reward. First, drills."  
  
Jon clenched his fists. "I want another Guide."  
  
  
~*~  
  
  
A car shot down the A6 Autobahn. Every once in a while the driver shouted a question in broken English.  
  
"Not yet!" snapped Stephen. "I don't know! Just keep going!"  
  
And he went back to his phone.  
  
Any map site could have given him directions to The Hospital With All The Americans At It. Siri probably could have found it with her digital eyes closed. But Stephen had no use for map sites. He was following his gut.  
  
 _Wow, German cars go fast! Although I'm sure American cars go faster. Buy American!_ he tweeted.  
  
Then, as a follow-up: _PS this means I am not dead. Sorry, conspiracy theorists! Blogosphere, you can calm down now._  
  
They zoomed past another exit while Stephen was checking the blogs again. He didn't know what time it was back in America, but surely one of them was awake, right? The comments would start pouring in any second now....  
  
His stomach cramped. As if he'd been running for miles without his usual every-five-minute breaks. Or as if it were trying to tell him something.  
  
"No!" he yelled at the driver. "Go back! Whatever that last exit was. German Word 363. Turn around and get on that road!"  
  
  
~*~  
  
  
Jon had lunch alone too. Toast and blue Jello.  
  
Landstuhl normally had two other Guides in residence, but one was on vacation and the other had just recently bonded with a Sentinel. There was a honeymoon period right after a bonding happened, and it turned out the cheesy romance novels on the topic were only slightly exaggerated.  
  
Left alone, he paced around the room for a while, hoping the motion would keep him from going stir-crazy. He tried again to remember the day he'd had the episode, but it was a complete blank. Even the waffles he'd had for breakfast or the people he'd reportedly shaken hands with afterward, well before the explosion that had set him off, were gone.  
  
(And maybe that was a good thing? Kerry had been sparse on the details, but he got the impression there had been sobbing, and curling up in a little ball trying to cover his head, and yeah, he would be okay with not remembering that.)  
  
Left unchecked, his thoughts drifted to those romance novels. Nobody had mentioned bonding yet: not the nurses, not the doctor he had seen for about five minutes, not the Guides themselves. It wasn't a requirement, right? And even if it was, someone would have told him if sex was part of the package, wouldn't they?  
  
Jon told himself not to panic. All he knew about any of this came from a lurid novel Stephen had described one to him at some point, in great detail. (Or it could have been more than one. They all sounded the same to Jon.) And these were the same conversations in which Stephen described how the protective heroism of a brave and noble Sentinel was one to which Stephen himself was uniquely suited, so Jon had to take them with a grain of salt.  
  
Not that Stephen wasn't a basically decent person. And privately, Jon thought his attraction to the role had more to do with the requisite scene where the Sentinel breaks down, crying manful tears at how overwhelmed he is with his manly duties, and is soothed by the tender ministrations of his gentle and stable Guide. Stephen was sort of pathological about blocking people out. A Sentinel-Guide bond of romance-novel proportions might just be the only excuse he would use to let someone in.  
  
Jon could hear him now, declaring that empathy was just an excuse liberals used to keep the rich and powerful down, and you would never catch _him_ being so...so....  
  
Hang on.  
  
Jon _could_ hear Stephen.  
  
He was hallucinating. Had to be. Or he was getting some kind of random stimulation and his senses didn't know how to process it, so they were swapping in something familiar. There was no way he had the power to hear one man from a quarter of the way around the world, let alone the focus to pick it out without going straight-up nuts.  
  
The door, well-oiled and perfectly smooth, slid open without so much as a whisper. It was Nurse Barrister. He was taller than Jon had imagined back when he'd been a voice on the other side of a wall. "Mr. Stewart? Congratulations. I called you from outside, but you didn't hear me. You've definitely regained some control."  
  
"Yeah. Great," said Jon, still trying to focus.  
  
"There's a bit of a situation," continued the nurse. "A gentleman was intercepted by security, not authorized or invited to be here, but he claims to know you. Or, well, he does know you, according to the receptionist who is a great fan of yours. But of course we would confirm it with you before letting him in."  
  
  
~*~  
  
  
"You understand that if you cause any kind of discomfort for Mr. Stewart, we will have you removed immediately."  
  
"I don't cause Jon discomfort. Except when he can't handle the Truth. And that's his own fault."  
  
The blond nurse looked pained, but no more than people usually did when talking to Stephen. "This wa—"  
  
Stephen made the turn before he did. As if there were time to wait for _directions_. He trusted his gut way more than these people, who obviously didn't know how to manage Jon if they were keeping him way off in some isolated corner of the building with nobody to talk to, and....  
  
"As I was saying," continued the nurse, as Stephen found himself walking into a dead end, "while that is the back wall of the sensory overload ward, if you want the side with a door, you have to circle around and go _this_ way."  
  
  
~*~  
  
  
It turned out the room he'd slept in and the observation room weren't directly connected, but fed into the same entrance hall in a kind of U-shape. Jon waited in the entrance hall, another bland box of a space with a few cream-colored chairs, because it made him feel like moderately less of an invalid. Not that Stephen wouldn't tease him for it anyway.  
  
Or so Jon assumed, until Stephen burst through the door in a rush of sound and color, an agitated Barrister on his heels. His hair stuck up all over the place, he was wearing jeans (jeans!) and a lightweight coat that hung unevenly on his torso, and he smelled like that artificial fragrance they pumped through charter plane cabins to mask the body odor that built up after fourteen-hour flights.  
  
"Jon!" he shouted, throwing his arms around Jon's shoulders. The plasticky fabric of the coat crinkled loudly; things in his pockets (phone, keys, wallet?) banged against Jon's hips. "What are you doing? The blogosphere has been saying horrible things! That you'd been blown up, or that you were skipping out on your show to get a tummy tuck, or...ooh, these are really nice pajamas. What are they, silk?"  
  
"Hey, c'mon, Stephen, it's okay," stammered Jon. He suddenly couldn't remember if Stephen had been on the call-in-case-of-emergency list. "Who told you I was here? How much do you already know?"  
  
"Nobody told me! Your wife said you were in shock, and my gut took care of the rest. And you're obviously out of shock now, so come on, let's check out of this place and get you back to America."  
  
"I can't." Jon tried to subtly pull away, but when Stephen refused to break the hug, he decided to roll with it and rested his chin on Stephen's shoulder. "I have, uh, sensitive senses right now. Haven't even been able to walk around the hospital yet. There's no way I could deal on a plane unless they sedated me, and I really don't feel like going through that again."  
  
"You can too walk around the hospital," scoffed Stephen. "It can't be any louder than I am. Nurse! Come on, we're going on a tour."  
  
"I can't allow it, Mr. Stewart," said Bannister. "Not without a...trained professional in attendance. You could do yourself further damage."  
  
Much as Jon hated to admit it, the man had a point. "Could we get back one of the people I was working with this morning? Just for this?"  
  
  
~*~  
  
  
They had to wait almost half an hour for the stupid professional to show up. At least it gave Stephen a chance to fill Jon in on what had been happening in the world while he had been unconscious, and then Internetless.  
  
It also brought Stephen to the realization the both shows had still been scheduled to tape if Jon didn't make it back in time, with a guest host filling in for Jon's chair. He was furious with himself for having deprived the Nation of a whole day's worth of his opinions just to retrieve his doing-fine-anyway friend...until it struck him that Jon approved. No, more than that: Jon was _proud_ of Stephen for having been so selfless.  
  
After the realization sank in, Stephen pretended he'd planned it that way.  
  
Once the stupid professional finally arrived, Stephen took an immediate dislike to his stupid face. He claimed to be American, but nobody who had lived overseas for this long really counted, in Stephen's opinion. Especially since he had the kind of disrespect for personal space that Stephen firmly associated with Europeans. He must have touched Jon's arm four times before they even got to the elevator, and when they got to the ground level he tried to lead Jon out with a hand on the small of his back, no matter how obviously Jon tried to shrug him off. Did the man have no self-awareness at all?  
  
They went down a couple of hallways, passing offices with potted plants, cartloads of towels and linens, doctors with clipboards, patients trying out new prosthetics. Stephen understood from _House, M.D._ that in hospitals there was usually someone being rushed to the emergency room, but apparently these weren't the halls used for that.  
  
These were the halls that led to the pool.  
  
"Classy venue," said Stephen, as a below-the-knee amputee did the backstroke past them. The pool was long and a nicely chlorinated blue, surrounded by mosaic-tiled floors and lit with the help of floor-to-ceiling windows down one wall. Rows of exercise equipment stood on the far side of the glass, and beyond them another row of windows revealed the skyline here at the top of the hill. "My country club could learn a thing or two from this setup."  
  
A woman on the far side of the pool, not visibly wounded but with one of those no-nonsense military hairdos, caught sight of Jon and Stephen and snapped a quick salute in their direction. Stephen saluted back, then poked Jon in the side. "You have a fan. Don't tell me you're too shocked to wave."  
  
"What?...Oh, sorry." Jon waved in the soldier's direction, then went back to wincing. "Distracted. It's a little loud in here, you know?"  
  
"Not that loud," said the stupid professional, touching Jon's sleeve. "Let's work on bringing that under control. Tell me about what you hear."  
  
"Just a lot of water," said Jon, twitching away from the contact and putting one hand to his ear. Not like he was trying to listen, more like he was trying to block the sound without being too obvious. "The, uh, the lapping and sloshing, and some rushing, I guess that must be the pipes? It's...."  
  
His voice kept getting quieter. Very inconsiderate of him. How was poor half-deaf Stephen supposed to hear?  
  
"It's very loud," he finished, both hands over his ears now.  
  
"You're taking in too much sound," said the stupid professional, like this was some kind of genius revelation. "I need you to focus on my voice, okay? Nothing else matters. Just listen to my words, and remember the volume my voice is supposed to be at, and try to match...."  
  
That was the point when he splayed his whole hand out over the top of Jon's spine and started _petting_. Like Jon was a skittish pony he was trying to soothe.  
  
"Can't you tell he doesn't _like_ that?" demanded Stephen, and shoved the stupid professional into the deep end.  
  
  
~*~  
  
  
The splash nearly deafened him; the whistle that followed was like an iron spike being driven into his skull. An ocean's worth of roaring had come out of nowhere and surrounded him. Eyes tight shut, breath coming thin through gritted teeth, he ground his palms harder against his ears and tried to will it all to go away....  
  
"Shake it off, Stewart!"  
  
The words were a shot of normality in the middle of the cacophony. Easy. Intelligible. And they didn't hurt.  
  
"I got rid of him! You can come back out of shock now! This is shock, right? Dammit, Jon, are you paying attention to me at all?"  
  
"Yes," whispered Jon, opening his eyes.  
  
"Well, good!" said Stephen. He was standing right in front of Jon, while out in the corner of Jon's vision a well-built lifeguard type was making good time in their direction, and the obnoxious Guide flailed in the water and yelled. "That's a healthy and productive habit to be in. You should always make sure you're aware of — hey — hey, what are you doing? Let me go!"  
  
The suffocating clamor had gone back to normal. Normal splashing. Normal angry Stephen. Normal hum of the machines in the next room. Normal, understandable words being hollered from the pool: "His hearing is in Sentinel overload! Get that damaging influence away from him and sedate—"  
  
"I don't need sedation!" snapped Jon. "Let him go," he added to the security guy, who had the flailing Stephen in a half nelson. "You can't throw him out. He's a medical necessity. He's my Guide."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon the Sentinel is back in the U.S., and trying to settle into his newly awakened senses, not to mention his new civic duties. Stephen meanwhile is dealing with his own sense of overload, as the walls he's developed to keep out other people's emotions start buckling under the strain.

"Yes, it's for sure. Said goodbye to Kerry — that woman deserves a medal, by the way — checked out of the hospital, riding toward the airport now."

"Oh, thank god," breathed Tracey. "Does that mean...did they figure it out?"

Stephen leaned against Jon's shoulder. "Tell her I figured it out!" he said loudly. "Tell her the doctors were useless! All they did was mess around and touch you in inappropriate ways!"

" _What?_ "

"Stephen is overreacting," said Jon into the phone, jabbing his elbow into his friend's ribs. "They were right all along. I'm a partial Sentinel — sight, hearing, and touch. And, uh, I'm thinking the hearing may have been activated a while ago."

With careful reserve, Tracey said, "Stephen's with you."

"Apparently at some point we bonded," admitted Jon. "That was before I left too — it's how he found way here. Listen, we can talk about it in detail when I get home, all right?" A frank discussion with his wife of Stephen's capability as a Guide was something he wanted to save for when Stephen wasn't listening. "The important thing is, we're both fine, and we're coming home."

 

~*~

 

Jon had hated their first nights back in the apartment after the towers fell.

He hadn't been able to sleep. He'd barely eaten. He jumped at shadows and checked the furniture and appliances obsessively to make sure they weren't falling apart. Tracey had been the one to call the doctor and get a prescription for sleeping pills; his hands shook when he tried to hold the phone.

"You're doing no worse than a lot of people," she had assured him. She was back to work sooner than he was, to see her boss taking a Xanax every time a plane went overhead, and the receptionist fighting not to tear up, or at least not while there was someone on the phone. "And better than some. Besides, once you get back into a routine, it'll help."

Stephen had hated that first day back in the office.

Everyone was so _emotional._ A couple of times an hour, someone would excuse themselves to sneak off to the bathroom and have a good cry. Ridiculous. And of course they assumed Stephen was doing the same that time he vanished for half an hour, instead of recognizing that a good skin care routine needs constant maintenance, especially now that he had this inexplicable puffiness around the eyes to deal with.

Jon was the worst. Stephen could practically feel the distress seeping out of his pores.

With everyone so subdued and none of the televisions on higher than mute, the building had been eerily quiet as Stephen stomped into Jon's office half an hour before rehearsal. A patch of desktop had been cleared among the pens, sticky notes, and general office detritus; Jon's head was down on folded arms, not exactly shaking or hiding, but not confident and leaderly, either.

"Man up, Stewart!" Stephen had ordered, slamming his hands down on top of a crossword puzzle and making a plastic Starbucks lid jump to the floor. "Don't you know people are counting on you? Sure, you're not exactly Cronkite, but that's no reason to slack off!"

"I think I'm losing it," Jon had said weakly. And then for some reason it popped out, though he had managed not to admit this even to his wife: "I keep thinking I can hear things breaking."

"Well, don't listen!" cried Stephen. It came so naturally to him, he didn't understand how anyone else could struggle with the idea.

For no reason Jon could grasp at the time, it worked.

 

~*~

 

Jon's family met him in the airport. Stephen did the polite thing and hung back while Jon scooped both kids into his arms (ending up with one on each hip, which was especially impressive as he didn't really have any hips to speak of), kissed each on the forehead, and then leaned between them to kiss his wife. It was clearly a very personal moment. Stephen didn't need to embarrass Jon for showing more emotion than men were supposed to admit to having.

Plus, the whole thing was overwhelming Stephen's own brain with warm and fuzzy feelings, and he had to focus on quieting them down.

He was jolted out of his head when Tracey seemed to materialize in front of him. "I'm sorry I was short with you on the phone. Thank you for being there for him."

"You're welcome," said Stephen automatically, accepting what he thought was going to be a handshake. He got another shock when Jon's wife kissed _him_ on the cheek. "Whoa! Not necessary!"

"Don't mind him," put in Jon, as they started to move through the terminal. Slowly, out of respect to Jon's burden and the general decrepitude that only made it worse. "He's just afraid you have cooties."

"Mommy doesn't have cooties," offered the boy. What was his name? Ned? Nick? "She's not a girl, she's a _Mommy_."

"It's rationalizations like that that will get people like you killed when the plague descends," Stephen informed him.

The bottom lip of the girl (Mandy? Millie?) started to tremble. "Daddy? What's a plague?"

"Something that's not going to happen, pumpkin," said Jon. "Stephen, save the apocalyptic stuff for when the kids aren't around, will you?"

He didn't sound annoyed, exactly, but the waves of pure joy had definitely settled down a bit. "Fine," said Stephen grudgingly. After what Jon had been through, he deserved to be humored a little.

Stephen ducked into the bathroom while the others were picking up Jon's suitcases (Stephen had been in too much of a hurry to pack anything himself), and emerged to find Jon and Tracey holding a whispered conversation. They straightened up when he approached, and Jon said, "Hey, Stephen, do you want to join us for dinner tonight?"

"I'd love to, but my dog and my housekeeper must be worried sick about me," said Stephen. "And I haven't moisturized properly in days, and I probably have a bunch of soap operas to catch up on, and...oh! Were you asking because you're afraid," he glanced at the children, now on the ground, and chose his words carefully, "you'll have another ensory-say eltdown-may without my idance-guay?" Hm, that didn't sound right. "I mean, my idance-straight?"

"Can't hurt to play it safe," admitted Jon. "Feel free to bring the dog. And give your housekeeper the night off."

 

~*~

 

"So, essentially, I'm the one who deserves all the glory for Jon's success," concluded Stephen. "Pass the caramel?"

Jimmy handed him the bottle. These ice cream dates went straight to Stephen's thighs, but he couldn't let his BFF-FSM's flavor be used in a more impressive sundae, so he slathered it on over the existing layers of whipped cream, chocolate sauce, sprinkles, and Americone Dream. "Gosh, Stephen, I thought he was the one with the extra senses."

"Yes, but who taught him how to use them?" countered Stephen, sitting back on Jimmy's office couch. (Almost as comfortable as Jon's office couch.) "You know that thing he does where he pays attention to like five TV sets at once, and can always pick it up when any one of them says something interesting?"

"No! Really?" exclaimed Jimmy, wide-eyed. "That's so cool! How come you've never mentioned it?"

"Well, I didn't know I could take credit for it before!" said Stephen. Honestly, did Jimmy not understand him at all? "I'm the one who taught him how to do it! Well, I yelled at him a couple times to pay attention to everything that was going on, and apparently it took. Pretty sure that makes me morally entitled to at least six of his Emmys."

"Mmhmm." Jimmy put a cherry on top of his sundae and lifted his spoon. "Does it ever work the other way around?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Well...has he ever done anything Sentinel-related that's forwarded your career? If nothing else, producing a a show successful enough to have its own spinoff...."

"I did not have _help_ making the _Report_ great," corrected Stephen. "Except maybe a smidge from my staff of about a hundred people, who should be thanking me for creating so many jobs in the field of making me look good. Besides, Jon's blood pressure was so high during the Bush years, his anger probably held me back. In fact, I bet it did! That has to put me up to deserving eight Emmys!"

"Hasn't your show only been running for seven years?"

"You are not being a very supportive friend right now, Jimmy Fallon," said Stephen sternly.

"Sorry." Jimmy sat lower in his seat, cowed. "I didn't mean to upset you, Stephen Colbert."

It wasn't as bad as with Jon, but all of a sudden Stephen was hyper-aware of the feelings all over the room. Jimmy was sad. And worried about him. Everything Stephen normally did to ignore or block out that sort of thing was having about as much effect as a Bush-era FEMA levee. Was his friend having some Category 7 emotions, or was Stephen just weakening? Had helping Jon to regain some self-control chipped away at his own?

Either way, Stephen needed to give himself some distance. "I have to go," he said, putting his sundae on Jimmy's desk. "I am urgently needed at a place. A place that is not here. You can have my ice cream. Or donate it to your interns. Whatever will make you happiest."

Jimmy stood to see him out. "Is this a Guide thing? Did you just feel the call across the city that your Sentinel has need of you?"

"Yes," said Stephen cunningly. He would have to remember what a fantastic excuse that made.

 

~*~

 

The first time they got called up, it was the tail end of one of the shows' dark weeks. Jon couldn't decide if that was a blessing or a curse.

"I was supposed to take my kids to a museum today," he said testily as the temporary ID badges were printed off that would give him and Stephen access to the precinct's inner workings. "There's this great exhibit on sarcophagi that's going to be taken down at the end of the month. And Maggie's Cleopatra phase might not even last that long."

"And I had to reschedule a mani-pedi," put in Stephen. "My nails and I are never going to get that time back. They grow up so fast."

"First time on a Sentinel round, sir?" asked the young man doing the printing. He scanned Jon's badge. "Hey, sight and hearing, you got the good ones. And no smell, which means you're never going to be put on bomb-sniffing or poison-testing. Count your blessings."

"I guess," said Jon. "Do you know what they have me doing?"

The guy shrugged. "Beats me. I just do the paperwork. Sign and date here."

They ended up in a small, blank-walled room with a table, a couple of mismatched chairs, and an old TV set that had been wheeled in on a metal cart. The cop who sat down with them, name of Wilson, reminded Jon of the black guy from whichever CSI it was that he'd watched for a while. "You ever done this before, Mr. Stewart?"

"What am I, chopped liver?" huffed Stephen.

Jon shushed him. "Never. Walk us through it."

The suspect, several photos of whom Wilson pulled from a manila envelope and spread out for Jon to study, was accused of violating a restraining order against his ex-girlfriend. The police had about eighty hours of footage from a security camera outside her workplace, and no technology capable of sorting through it as effectively as a human eye. "Do you have any idea how fast we can play a tape before you lose track of the information?"

"No idea, officer," said Jon. He hadn't even (knowingly) practiced turning his Sentinel sensitivity up before. What if he couldn't track things above normal speed at all?

"It's all right. We have a standard test tape for this. I'll load it up."

While Wilson loaded up the footage (it turned out to be a DVD, not a physical tape), Stephen said what Jon had been thinking. "If Jon turns out to be useless at this, do we have to sit through all eighty hours?"

"It isn't like jury duty. We'll keep you for the same amount of time whether you get through part of the work or finish it all early." The officer raised his eyebrows. "This was all on the release you signed."

"He read the confidentiality parts very closely," said Jon. "Didn't you, Stephen?"

"Nnnnnn—" (Jon coughed loudly.) "—yes. Sorry. Something in my throat there."

They reached in tandem for their complimentary paper cups of water.

 

~*~

 

Two and a half hours later, Jon's eyes were dry and sore. His neck was stiff from holding it in one place for so long, but that was less noticeable, and any signals of pain from lower on his body were blurred and distant. The light around the entrance of the bakery had moved at double-speed from a grey morning to a bright and sunny afternoon; people power-walked by on the sidewalk, none of them recognizable as the hollow-eyed, sullen man in the photographs.

"Jon? Did you hear him?"

"Hm?" said Jon, still deep in the focused sensory reverie. Stephen's voice fitted perfectly into it, too natural to be an interruption, like an extension of himself.

"We're stopping. You can turn it off now."

Turn what off? "I don't...."

"Close your eyes!" said Stephen impatiently.

Jon did. It snapped him back into reality, complete with awareness of a whole lot of aches.

"That was the most boring thing in the history of boring," complained Stephen, as they left the building side by side. "The guy wasn't even there! Talk about a waste of time. Do you want to grab coffee? And maybe a massage, because I've got one hell of a sympathetic neck-ache just from watching you."

"I think I just want to get home," said Jon, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. Stephen had to yank on his arm to steer him away from walking into a fire hydrant.

"Fine." Stephen waved for a cab. "But you need to take it easy. Do some stretching. Otherwise your soreness will keep _me_ up, and would that be fair? No. Your wife will back me up on this, Stewart, don't try to fight it."

"Right, right." Jon squinted curiously at him. "Stephen? How good are _your_ senses? I mean, can you actually feel if I'm in distress or whatever when we're both at home? And does that extend to, uh, other feelings?"

Stephen tensed, his eyes shuttering against any connection they had managed to scrape together. "Even if I could, I am very practiced at blocking these things out."

 

~*~

 

"Siri!" moaned Stephen, trying to hide under his pillow. "Tell me how a Guide gets better at blocking things out!"

"I'm hearing that you want information on: travel guides to Bangkok South," chirped his phone. "Is that correct?"

Stephen glared at the phone. "Okay, now you're just doing that on purpose."

This had never happened before. Or at least, if on certain lonely nights Stephen's fantasies were a little more vivid, he had been able to remain blissfully ignorant of the reason. Now, though, he was piercingly aware that Jon Stewart was having Feelings. Specifically, feelings of great enjoyment at being touched by his wife. (At least, Stephen hoped it was his wife.)

The one mercy was that it wouldn't last long. Jon's Sentinel touch kept going into overdrive while he was getting it on, and it was the one thing he hadn't called Stephen for help with. Which was fine by Stephen. If he couldn't un-know the sordid details of his best frenemy's sex life, he should be able to pretend he didn't know them.

By the time Siri found an anonymous Guide help line, Jon's amorous encounter was over, and Stephen's head was dripping wet and freezing from the cold shower he'd stuck it under. He snuggled into a fluffy towel monogrammed ME and dialed.

"You've reached the New York State Sentinel-Guide support center," said the person who picked up. "Everything you say will be confidential as long as there is no immediate danger to yourself or others. My name is Eloisa, I've been bonded with my Sentinel for twenty-two years, and if there's anything I don't know personally, I can put you in touch with someone who does. Is there something in particular I can help you with?"

"Yes please," said Stephen, in his most winningly pitiful voice. "How do I stop knowing when my Sentinel is having sex with other people?"

After a few confused minutes of conversation, they got it cleared up that Stephen wasn't being cheated on or neglected, that he had never been sleeping with his Sentinel in the first place.

Eloisa asked some questions about his range and experience with empathy, and Stephen had to explain the whole thing about knowing his Sentinel was in distress in Afghanistan. (He was not, he hastened to add, that famous and handsome TV star whose Sentinel had had trouble in Afghanistan a month and a half ago. He was some other guy.) Again with the confusion. Stephen couldn't be sure, but he sensed Eloisa did not approve of that much separation.

"Can't say I've ever heard of a case quite like this," she said at last. "Excepting that gentleman from the TV, of course. Could be you're a natural prodigy."

"I don't want to be a prodigy!" wailed Stephen. "Not at this!"

"Easy, sugar. As I was saying, it could be your natural empathy was overstressed by that unusual distance, and will be extra-sensitized until you have a chance to adjust. It isn't as well-known a risk as Sentinels going into sensory fugues, but it does happen."

That sounded promising. "Okay! Great! How do I adjust?"

"If you talk about this with your Sentinel, and use similar techniques to the ones that work best when you're guiding his senses...."

"I don't want to talk about this with Jon!" cried Stephen. "That's the whole reason I called you!"

 

~*~

 

Over coffee and the morning crossword, Tracey remarked, "Going to be out late again today?"

"Yes!" snapped Jon. "And every day this week. We talked about this!"

Silence fell. Jon winced.

"Okay, no more coffee for you, honey," said Tracey, taking his mug (printed with a cartoon microphone and the caption COMEDIANS DO IT STANDING UP). "I'm not blaming you. You get that, right? It's just something you have to do. No different from being called up for jury duty."

"Except that with jury duty there's a good chance they already caught the guy," muttered Jon. "And either way, my daughter has decided she's never speaking to me again. Do you think ten down is 'appleseed'?"

"I was thinking 'appletree'. She's five. She'll recover. Is there anything else bothering you?"

Jon silently inked in APPLE, then sighed. "Last night..."

Tracey waved it away. She had watched Jon get his other senses under control; she trusted he would adjust here. In the meantime, it would take a while for the novelty to wear off of seeing her husband thrown into heights of ecstasy just by getting to touch her leg. "It's flattering, honestly."

"That too. But after that...please, can I have my coffee back? I didn't sleep great. Bad dreams."

"Not vision-type dreams?" said Tracey, trying to keep her voice light.

Sentinel dreams were the least-understood part of the whole phenomenon. They were lucid, except when they weren't. They could be prophetic, but the jury was out on whether they were any more effective at it than horoscopes or fortune cookies. Depending on who you asked, they were either an extension of the empathetic bond shared by Sentinels and Guides or a shared cultural archetype as common and meaningless as "having to give a presentation naked."

Tracey had always been in the "overblown fortune cookies" camp. Either way, she wasn't looking forward to seeing Jon dragged through something like that.

To her relief, Jon shook his head. "Not unless you think there's any chance I'll be lost in a rainforest any time soon."

"Doesn't sound likely," agreed Tracey, pushing the mug back across the table.

"It's always dark and misty, and there are these weird stone ruins....kind of Disney's _Jungle Book_ as directed by M. Night Shyamalan. I'm being chased by a tiger, or sometimes a leopard. But I don't think it wants to eat me or anything."

"So, what, it wants your autograph?" joked Tracey. "Hey, 'jaguar' could be four across."

Jon's mouth twitched with something in the smile family. "Mostly it just feels disapproving,"

 

~*~

 

Three more hours of staring at video. This time Wilson got to sit back and read a book for the duration. Stephen got up halfway through and stood behind Jon's chair to start rubbing his shoulders. It wasn't much, and Jon didn't seem to consciously notice, but it took the edge off the tension.

At least, until they were going back out through the lobby, and Jon stopped short between a display of American flags and a shelf of pamphlets advertising home security systems. "I have to go back in."

"Do not," said Stephen reasonably. "What happened to wanting to spend more time with your family, huh?"

"I know, I know!" said Jon, too agitated to ask when Stephen had picked that up. "But what if he showed up five minutes after we stopped? What if he was in the part we watched and I just missed him?"

"What if he got plastic surgery? What if he's some kind of ninja with the ability to fool Sentinel senses? Let Manhattan's finest deal with it."

"He shouldn't be allowed to get away with it!" burst out Jon. "Not in my city! My people do not deserve to be stalked and harassed in _my city!_ "

The feelings he had been trying to contain all week hit Stephen like a sledgehammer. The anger, the helplessness, territorial instincts in their most primal form corralled and thwarted like a big cat locked in a cage. A Sentinel was supposed to protect every single human being in their tribe, which thanks to a couple thousand years of developing civilization meant Jon felt responsible for about eight million people in a thriving high-tech metropolis, which he couldn't possibly pull off —

— and the worst of it was that Stephen was supposed to protect _him_ , and couldn't do that either, because there was nobody he could push into a pool to make everything okay.

"Fine!" shouted Stephen. "Go back in if you want! But _I'm_ going _home!_ "

"Problem here, gentlemen?" said a person Stephen barely registered, except for the vague impression that she was in blue, shorter than Jon, and ready to snap both of them in half if she did not have time for their nonsense.

"No!" snapped both men. Stephen over his shoulder, as he was already storming out.

 

~*~

 

With Stephen gone, Jon came to his senses. His concentration might not be great even with his Guide's help, but he knew he'd end up wasting as much time as the average person without it.

He went home. Read a bedtime story, ostensibly to his son, but he noticed Maggie listening. Drank some chamomile tea and turned in early.

Sure enough, it wasn't long before he found himself back in that dream-jungle.

He was standing on the low remains of a wall of rust-brown stone, all but overtaken by creeping vines and patches of moss. Something moved in the trees off to his left: a shape subtle and fluid, like leaves trembling in the breeze, but otherwise unable to blend into the smorgasbord of greens and shadows. It was too bright. Too...

...grey?

The figure padded out into the clearing. It was another of those big cats, one he hadn't seen before, and sure enough, its thick fur was all white and grey. A lynx, Jon thought. Not exactly vibrant, and he might have missed it completely in an Arctic winter forest somewhere; it was just the weirdness of the dream-landscape that made it stand out.

 _Are you going to scowl at me too?_ he asked it. _Tracey would tell me it's just how cats' faces look, but that jaguar last night was definitely scowling._

The lynx sniffed, turned in a circle, then looked back expectantly at him. Like instead of stalking him, this one wanted him to follow.

 _Why not,_ said Jon under his breath, and did.

He never would have imagined "trudging through an imaginary rainforest after a pushy lynx" as a metaphor for using his Sentinel senses, but in the middle of climbing over a rotting tree trunk it clicked. The focus, the sense of purpose, the feeling of taking in a lot of information and sifting through it like a pro even without knowing exactly where it would lead...

 _Are you, uh, me?_ he asked, landing back on the forest floor and brushing bark and fungus off his butt.

The lynx looked unimpressed. Not only that, it managed to look unimpressed in exactly the same way Jon did when reacting to a particularly stupid question from a FOX morning news anchor. And all in spite of the fact that it did not, strictly speaking, have eyebrows.

 _Okay, okay, I get it,_ muttered Jon. _Could I at least tell me where I'm going?_

It trotted onward, stub of a tail twitching.

The trees thinned out again, this time into something that was almost a meadow, grass sprouting up thickly between the carpeting of twigs and dry leaves. There was another stone structure at the far side, taller and more complete, two and a half walls of an Indiana Jones type temple with the carved feet of half-demolished guardian animals still planted outside the door. From the light through the archway Jon could tell that the roof was long gone.

His attention was drawn away by movement in the grass. Something small this time, more like a house cat, with proportions that were decidedly non-feline.

Before he could figure out what it was, the big cats began to arrive.

 

~*~

 

When Jimmy came back into the den with two bowls of popcorn, Stephen had changed into cowboy pajamas and started deconstructing the couches around the flatscreen to build a cushion fort. He looked more put-together than he had sounded on the phone. It seemed the promise of a sleepover full of quality friendship time was already doing him good.

He was definitely constructing that fort to be one-size-fits-one, though.

"Do I get to come in?" said Jimmy hopefully, holding out the larger bowl.

Stephen hung back, clutching a pillow in front of his chest like armor. In a small voice he said, "It hurts."

"What hurts? Can I help?"

" _People_ hurt," said Stephen weakly. "I can't make them stop any more. And Jon hurts the most, so you're the only person I can turn to. The only other one who would understand." He flapped one hand at the far side of the dismembered couch. "Can you be my BFF from over there tonight, Jimmy Fallon? Please?"

"Sure. I can do that." Jimmy set down the popcorn and nodded to the DVD rack. "You grab the popcorn, I'll get a movie. How do you feel about _Pretty Woman_?"

 

~*~

 

Leopard, tiger, panther, mountain lion: there were at least twenty, sleek and deadly, green- and golden-eyed. Jon spotted another lynx, its fur browner and sleeker than his fluffy grey specimen, and a species he didn't recognize, like a miniature cougar with tufted ears.

He could just pick up the suggestion of their Sentinels in their shadows, the vague suggestions of human forms in a similar plethora of sizes, shapes, and weights.

It was a tiger with a magnificent ruff and an unflinching silver-grey gaze who broke the silence. In a voice that was not a voice it intoned, _Jon Stewart._

Jon felt like a middle schooler called up in front of the class. _That's me._

The tiger bared two rows of dagger-length teeth that glinted white in the moonlight. _I love your show._

 _Excuse the fanboy, please,_ sighed a jaguar-sized cat with fur so dark it was almost a shadow itself. _Granted, we are all very impressed with your work with first responders, but that's not why we're here._

 _Um, thanks,_ said Jon. _Who are you all, exactly?_

A pale-furred leopard cocked its head at him. Not a snow leopard, it didn't have the extra fluff, just one with a lightish beige underlying its spots. _Who do you think? We're the other Sentinels of New York City._

Jon threw a suspicious look at his lynx. It licked its paw and began washing its face, the picture of innocence. Like it hadn't conspired to bring him here.

 _We don't usually do this,_ the black jaguar explained. _But then, most Sentinels have the sense to come find us first._

 _Listen, if you're here to tell me off for stepping on your toes...uh, paws?...I completely understand,_ said Jon. _I never wanted this gig. I'm just some guy who tells dumb jokes for a living...._

 _I'm an electrician,_ she (?) interrupted. _Phil over there is a janitor. Malika's still in high school._

 _I teach creative writing at Marymount Manhattan!_ put in the tiger.

 _We're not here to scold you,_ continued the black jaguar. _We're here to help. Right now you've got it in your head that listening to your instincts means something like personally patrolling the whole city, and maybe the rest of the metro area with it. Isn't that right?_

Jon sank to one knee to rub his lynx's head, ruffling the fur between its ears and around the ridges of its brows. _Sort of._

_Well, that isn't how it works any more. It doesn't come natural to us, but you can train yourself to remember that the city isn't only yours. All together, we've got it covered._

So saying, she turned and padded off into the shadows, this time to disappear completely.

 _Next time it gets overwhelming, look one of us up, understand?_ added the pale leopard. The others around him (?) were also beginning to step back and melt out of view, one by one. _We don't have to be best friends or anything._

 _Although we could if you wanted!_ put in the tiger, before fading into a bank of tall grass, Cheshire-cat style.

Jon couldn't be sure, but he thought the leopard looked amused. _The point is that there's no pressure. Most of us are loner types — our Guides excepted, of course. We'll understand_

 _Speaking of Guides,_ put in the reddish tuft-eared cat, one of the few remaining. A caracal, that was the word for it. _You should take better care of yours! It'll be good for both of you!_

It twitched its ears in the direction of the ruin. Jon turned to see. He kept his ears open, but when he looked back the other Sentinels had all made a perfectly silent exit.

 _Did you see them go?_ he asked the lynx. It shrugged.

And there, again, was that low-to-the-ground flash of something on the move.


	3. Chapter 3

Stephen sobbed through Richard Gere taking Julia Roberts to the opera for the first time, and fell asleep before the credits with his cheeks still wet.

Jimmy risked getting close enough to the cushion fort to draw a sheet over him, then rolled up in his own sleeping bag and closed his eyes without even bothering to brush his teeth.

Sleepovers were _fun_.

 

~*~

 

 _Follow it!_ ordered Jon.

His lynx didn't need to be told twice. On plate-sized paws it bounded after the mystery creature, whose short legs were no match for such a pursuer. Instead it stopped in its tracks and flopped down in the grass, rolling its body into a football-sized lump.

A hedgehog.

The lynx nosed cautiously at its spines, then looked up at Jon as he jogged over, as if to say, _Now what?_

Jon sank into a crouch and tried to touch the spray of spines without jabbing himself. Turned out he was worried about the wrong thing: his hands went right through it as if it were made of smoke.

 _Stephen?_ he asked.

The hedgehog wiggled. Like it was trying to roll, but didn't know how.

 _Okay, backing off,_ said Jon. He couldn't say how, but he was dead certain that as much as the lynx was him, the hedgehog was Stephen. _You too,_ he added to his lynx, and it obligingly padded backward to sit on its haunches in the low grass.

 _Take better care of your Guide,_ one of the other Sentinels had told him. What did that mean? What kind of care did self-involved, sensual Stephen need that he wasn't making a point of getting for himself?

On the other hand... _I've been kind of wrapped up in myself since this whole thing started, haven't I?_ said Jon out loud. _Okay, I thought about what it meant for my family, but you're involved just as much as they are. And I never even asked about how it was affecting you._

He paused. Considered the spines.

 _Not that you made it easy,_ he pointed out. _What with yelling at me all the time, and being generally...well, you know. I don't think you've done anything uncomplicatedly **nice** since...um, since you hugged me at Landstuhl._ He paused again. _I was really glad to see you, you know that? Don't know if I mentioned it, because I got swept up in sensory overload like ten minutes later, but I...I was so, so happy to see you._

Now that he stopped and looked at it, Stephen's prickliness wasn't so different from his own snappishness when his senses were out of control. And while Stephen was the one person who could be counted on not to overwhelm Jon's Sentinel senses, it couldn't work the other way around, could it? Whether or not a Guide had heightened empathy in general, their Sentinel was always the person they felt most strongly.

 _I'm sorry I yelled,_ said Jon softly.

Stephen-the-hedgehog twitched. Out between the spines peered a pair of bright black eyes. Jon-the-lynx flattened itself against the ground and stretched its nose forward.

"You should be sorry," huffed Stephen.

Under the chipped stone archway, where there had nothing but weeds a moment ago, he was sitting against one of the columns. His hands were clasped over one knee while the other leg stretched out in front of him, fallen leaves catching on his bare foot. Shadowy though his figure was, Jon could see that he was without glasses, and, for some reason, wearing cowboy pajamas.

"I didn't do anything wrong," he continued, jaw set and shoulders stiff. "You were very rude."

"I could have been nicer." Jon's eyes flicked between the indistinct human form under reddish stones and the poky little hedgehog sitting on a three-pointed leaf. "Stephen...if you're really mad, okay. But if you're just trying to find the rhetorical equivalent of things to stab me with so I won't eat you...."

"It's an appreciable risk," said Stephen. "Even metaphorically, I would be delicious."

Jon-the-lynx flopped down in a furry half-circle in the grass around Stephen-the-hedgehog: protective, not forcing any touches, but not about to let him go anywhere. "Will you answer me one thing? Are you having trouble with emotions, or not?"

"...Yes."

"So let me help you," said Jon. "I don't know what I can do, but at least let me try."

"The other Guide said you should try to do for my emotions whatever I do to help with your senses," admitted Stephen.

Jon perked up. "Another Guide? Did you have a mystical experience with the spirit-avatars of your comrades too?"

Stephen gave him an odd look. "No. I called a hotline."

"Oh."

"And if you're supposed to yell at me to get it together, I'd rather stay in my huddle, thanks," added Stephen, with forced chipperness. "Unless I've been doing this wrong the whole time. In which case, sorry, but I don't know how to do any better, so —" He took a deep breath. "So you should probably cut your losses and find yourself a better Guide because you probably deserve that anyway."

Jon tugged at a curling pale-green creeper that lay along the ground. The stem twisted between his fingers. "I don't think the yelling helps."

"Gee, thanks!" yelled Stephen, as his hedgehog rolled up tighter than ever. "Real model of tact you are here, Stewart!"

"It doesn't hurt, either!" protested Jon. "The yelling isn't important! What's important is that it's you!"

"Oh, sure!" Against the moss-tinted backlighting, Stephen's hands formed air-quotes. "You fact-y types _love_ to reduce everything to 'science' and 'biology'. No personal responsibility, just hormones and —"

The creeper snapped off at the base. Jon flicked it away. "I like your voice."

"— what?"

"Your voice. Loud, quiet, whatever — I like it. I listen to you all the time. Which means I'm so used to it...any situation, any environment, I can tell how you should sound. It's familiar. Comfortable. Easy to calibrate my Sentinel hearing by, sometimes when you're not even actually there. I can't imagine bonding with any other Guide. They wouldn't have your voice."

Stephen was facing him now, intent in the gloom, the planes of his limbs and back forming stern lines.

"So what if you tried to listen to my, uh, my emotions, in the same way?"

"Your _angry_ emotions," sulked Stephen, but there wasn't much bite to it. The hedgehog's eyes were visible again.

"I'm not angry right now. And even if I was, it doesn't hurt my ears when you yell," Jon reminded him. "You can use me as a baseline. Calibrate everything else by that. All you have to do — I think — is open up. At least try it."

Stephen-the-hedgehog started to unroll, revealing tiny feet and pinkish skin under a fine layer of white fluff. So he thought Jon might be on to something after all. He only needed a little more coaxing....

"I won't hurt you right now," said Jon. "I swear. Let me feel it at you."

_I just want you to be okay again._

The hedgehog fell flat on its stomach, a tiny spray of grass blades all around it like a halo of secondary spines. The lynx, otherwise taxidermy-still, kept it fixed with golden eyes.

Darkness had fallen on the forest-edge, the toppled columns, everything except the two creatures. Jon couldn't see his own feet, could pick Stephen's shape out more by immediate memory than by vision, but the hedgehog with lowered spines was clear as it touched its nose to the lynx's cheek.

_You're my friend. One of my best, and I love you._

The big grey cat was purring. Whether that was something real lynxes did or only metaphorical spirit-ones, Jon couldn't have said.

_I don't want any other Guide. Better, worse, whatever. I want you._

Stephen-the-hedgehog had clambered up onto one of Jon-the-lynx's front paws. With a flick of its wrist Jon-the-lynx tipped the little form between both paws, then rubbed its fluffy cheeks against Stephen-the-hedgehog's stomach.

_Because you're mine._

Jon-the-lynx had him pinned. Surrounded, by warmth and strength and purring like a semi going by. Stephen wriggled and thrashed, not to escape, but to throw himself against Jon's chest and end up half-submerged in thick fur.

_My Guide. Like my city. The one I get to protect. The one I...._

Stephen-the-human moaned into the vast empty quiet, and Jon realized, too late to care about stopping, that this had gone way beyond what he had bargained for.

 _Love me harder,_ begged Stephen, and Jon adored him, sharp and thundering, unstoppable as the tide coming in.

 

~*~

 

Stephen was making pancakes (for loose values of the word "making") when Jimmy found him in the kitchen. "Good morning, Jimmy Fallon!" he singsonged, dumping another set of palm-sized oblongs onto a plate. Each was speckled with appetizing shades of brown and tan in between blooms of charcoal-black.

"Stephen! You look...." Hmm, he probably wouldn't appreciate hearing _less like a hollow-eyed zombie._ "...better! Guess you really just needed a good night's sleep after all, huh?"

"And popcorn!" said Stephen brightly. "And movies. Have some pancakes."

"Um," said Jimmy.

"...Or don't," added Stephen after a moment, switching off the stove. His voice had gone blown-glass cautious; he brushed some of the flour off his wrists (and onto the floor, but oh well). "You can say no. It...it won't crush my soul forever if you don't like my pancakes. I mean, obviously it won't! That would be stupid! Right?"

It was pretty standard Stephen Colbert hyperbole, but something about his strained cheerfulness made Jimmy want to give it a serious answer. "That wouldn't be stupid if it happened," he said. "It would be sad. And I think...maybe...God willing...we could make these edible. What if we tried them with my ice cream?"

 

~*~

 

Jon refused to feel weird about this. Or guilty. At least, not yet. He waited for the game of Wii Go-Kart to reach a breaking point, then leaned over the back of the couch, ruffled his son's hair, and said to his wife, "Is it okay if I leave early for this thing, meet Stephen for coffee?"

Tracey looked up from her controller. "More coffee? Honey, are you feeling all right?"

"Didn't sleep that deeply," admitted Jon. "But I think I might be having a breakthrough."

"Oh, good! I guess your subconscious mind was just working too hard to let you get much rest."

"Something like that," said Jon, over the familiar ditty of the _Choose Your Kart!_ screen. "And I won't really know if it'll work until I get a chance to talk with my Guide, so...."

He felt immediately bad for pulling rank. Tracey rolled her eyes, but gave him a peck on the cheek. "Of course you're going. Take care of your city."

Nate frowned up at him. "Dad? Are you like a spy now?"

"Nah. Way less exciting," Jon assured him. "If we were in a movie, I would be Tech Lab Guy #3, and this would be the part they collapse into a two-minute montage."

 

~*~

 

Up until a few blocks from the address Jon had named on the phone, Stephen couldn't remember the last time he had felt this calm.

It was like he'd been living under a waterfall. The roar of Other People's Feelings had become part of the background, unnoticed until the day he woke up able to hear his own whispers again, and realized he had been covering his ears and shouting for who knew how long.

He didn't trust it, naturally. His gut was sure it couldn't last.

A stoplight away from the coffee place, Stephen was relieved to feel that something was wrong — so much that he threw a couple of large bills at the cabbie without counting them. He found a short line at the counter with Jon standing off to one side, studying the blackboard with the day's specials chalked on it. Someone had drawn a false-color sandwich under the list of tea flavors. It was better than Stephen could do, but it wasn't _that_ fascinating.

Stephen's hand was on his shoulder without even thinking about it. "Jon," he said, voice low. "Quit staring at the molecules and decide, already."

Jon unfroze with a gasp. "Stephen! I...thanks." He refocused on Stephen's hand, blinking rapidly under the brim of his Mets cap. "Um. I'm okay now, I think."

"Good!" Clamping his hands under his arms, Stephen tried to sense whether Jon was listening to his suddenly racing heartbeat. "Good. Then I'm getting in line. You can keep standing around if you need to, but I always know what I want."

He planted himself at the end of the queue. A moment later, Jon fell in step behind him.

Stephen couldn't help knowing that Jon was balancing a swirl of confused Feelings, but for once he was able to wall off the full force of them, long enough to pay the barista without yelling at anyone. His phone said forty minutes until they were expected at the precinct; two tall and empty chairs by the window tables said they had a place to wait it out.

"So," said Jon, who had been un-American enough to get tea. "That did happen, right? It wasn't just a really elaborate dream?"

"You were a very handsome lynx," said Stephen, and (against his gut's better judgment) opened himself to the reaction.

A moment of sharp, sweet relief: Everything Jon had felt at him last night was still there. Tenderness and thanks, warmth and love, a fierce possessiveness that left the paper sleeve of Stephen's mug sticking to his suddenly sweaty palms. But all that was rolled up in guilt and contrition, a sense of torment Stephen couldn't place. It wasn't that Jon was angry at Stephen, at least; no, he put all the blame on himself for, for....

"Jon, don't be absurd," hissed Stephen, under his breath so the whole room wouldn't listen in. "That was the pure and unsullied expression of the deep spiritual connection between a Sentinel and his Guide. It was not _cheating_."

Jon winced. "Are you implying that my marriage is tawdry and unspiritual, or what?"

"No!" snapped Stephen. Apparently quiet-yelling was an untapped skill of his. "Not all of it! Mostly just the sex part. And it's not like you're having much luck there lately anyway."

Jon went as still as if he'd zoned-out again. "How did you —?"

"Couldn't block it out," said Stephen primly. "But I think I'll be able to now. Given how happy your lady wife usually is when she _knows_ I'm paying attention, if she knew about this, she'd probably be thanking you for taking care of it."

That made an impression, he could tell. "I guess," allowed Jon. "But it can't happen again. You understand?"

"No," huffed Stephen, swirling his coffee with one of those ubiquitous bisected brown mini-straws.

"Stephen...."

"Look, if you want to be stubborn about this, fine." Even if he wanted to, a tiny little hedgehog could hardly chase down a lynx that didn't want to be caught — no matter how svelte and athletic he was on the non-astral plane. "But it made you happy. I don't understand why you don't want to feel like that again."

 

~*~

 

For the first time, Jon wished he and Stephen could trade abilities. He couldn't tell if Stephen was in denial, or had somehow failed to make the connection, or hadn't experienced their dream-meeting as sexual in the first place.

No, scratch that last one. The way he had moaned....

Jon tried not to think about it as Officer Wilson loaded up the next DVD. It was a moot point anyway. At least, until Stephen's thumbs dug into his shoulder blades, and he nearly jumped out of his chair. "What are you doing?"

"Getting a head start," said Stephen matter-of-factly. "Unless you have a secret fetish for crippling neck pain? I'm not saying I would judge you or anything...but I would judge you."

"I can deal with it," protested Jon. "You really don't have to...."

"You liked it fine yesterday."

"You didn't do this yesterday."

Wilson coughed. "Afraid he did, Sentinel Stewart. If you were insensate at the time, it's the responsibility of you and your Guide to notify —"

"I wasn't zoned, and you don't have to call me Sentinel," said Jon quickly. "It's fine. Stephen, go ahead and do whatever. Officer, just roll the tape, okay?"

The security footage started up again. This was a nighttime shot, eerie greens standing out from pitch-black shadows. Taxis zipped by. Someone paused on the sidewalk to wrestle with a broken umbrella; other pedestrians speedwalked around her in ones and twos. Jon took in every shadowed face with ease, matching hairstyles and cheekbones, jawlines and eye spacing. None of them were the target.

And they left him with sensory processing to spare.

Stephen's hands had gone still; whether he was wisely spacing out his efforts to give Jon relief without cramps or simply being lazy, Jon couldn't tell. What he could sense was the exact pressure and position of each finger against his shoulders, the texture of the T-shirt fabric where it was held against his skin. And there was something in addition to the warmth, a slight pulsing...he listened for Stephen's heartbeat, and sure enough, they matched up.

Oh, god, he could feel Stephen's heart through his fingertips and he wasn't zoning, or overloading, instead he was hitting some kind of perfect groove where he could compare every digitally captured nose to Creepy McStalkerface's and at the same time guess exactly which air currents on the back of his neck were the result of Stephen breathing in.

"Stop the tape!"

Wilson grabbed the remote and hit pause. "Timestamp?"

"What?...No, I didn't see the guy, it's not that. Can we do the speed test again? I'm having a better feeling about it this time."

 

~*~

 

At 14:28 of the 3/17/2012 tape, Creepy McStalkerface strolled into frame, wearing a muffler and leading a tired-looking basset hound. He stood next to a fire hydrant for ten minutes, staring at the revolving door of the hotel his ex was trying to manage in peace. Didn't even clean up after the dog when it squatted next to one of the decorative bushes.

He wasn't on the next tape, which Jon blew through in its entirety just in time to finish out the afternoon. But with proof positive that the restraining order had been treated like a nonbinding Congressional resolution, any more sightings they found over the next few days would be gravy.

"Good work, Senti— er, Mr. Stewart," said Wilson, with a fervent shake of Jon's hand. "You too, Mr. Colbert," he added. Stephen nodded and tried to look stoic, though it wasn't easy when he could practically taste Jon's elation on the air.

His hand found its way to Jon's lower back as they emerged onto the clear evening outside. It wasn't like he planned it, and obviously he would have stopped right away if Jon didn't appreciate it, but Jon's reaction was nothing like it had been with the stupid over-feely professional at Landstuhl. On the contrary, he didn't even seem to notice as he brought up a number on his phone screen. "Hi, babe. Yeah, it's over. And I have good news...."

Stephen couldn't make out the exact words, but from her tone of voice Tracey was obviously thrilled. They traded a few lines about domestic little things, none of it significant in the broader scheme of American greatness; there was no reason it should make Jon so happy. (Unless this was what he had preferred all along? No. He had always appreciated it when Stephen talked at him about important topics. Right?)

Stephen's fingers tensed, digging into the folds of Jon's shirt....

Jon jumped. "Stephen! Uh, you can let go now, okay?"

"You only had to ask," sulked Stephen, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

"Mmhmm," said Jon, and went back to the phone, adjusting his hat. "Sorry, hon. No, it's fine. On my way now. Love you too."

The sky to the west was solid grey, and as they went their separate ways Stephen heard the first rumble of thunder. He wondered if Jon would already be able to listen to the rain.

 

~*~

 

Jon was still glowing with the joy of accomplishment as he fielded a late-night call from his publicist. Tracey's feet lay across his lap; she was trawling some craft blog or other. When Jon had finished turning down interview requests, he tried to stretch far enough to plug the phone into its charger without disturbing her, with no success. Sentinel senses might push the limits of human capabilities, but Sentinel spines didn't bend any more than usual.

The phone ended up on the carpet next to the arm of the couch, while Jon leaned the other way and imposed himself on his wife's attention. "Hey, babe. Can I steal you from that thing?"

Tracey obligingly set her MacBook aside, though she raised her eyebrows as Jon tried to cuddle. "What, out here? The kids are in the next room."

Jon made a face. "I think I can control myself if we resolve to just snuggle. Please? I was pretty fantastic today, remember. Doesn't that do anything for you?"

Her smile was brilliant. "C'mere."

Jon ended up lying half on top of her, just enough so that they both fit along the couch, not so much that she would feel crushed. He blew a few strands of hair out of the way and rested his face against her neck, fingers braceleting her wrist as they rested against her ribcage. When she hummed in appreciation, he could feel the vibration in her throat and from her lungs.

"What are you thinking so hard about?" teased Tracey.

"Not thinking," corrected Jon, thumb circling the pulse point on her wrist. "Listening."

It was nice. And surprisingly easy. Why hadn't he tried this before?

For that matter, why shouldn't Jon try to go a little farther?

It was high time he made his Sentinel senses work for him, instead of against. He'd calibrated them on Stephen earlier, so the memories were fresh; all he had to do was match those levels. Closing his eyes would help him focus, keep him from zoning on the visuals. Then it was just a matter of listening to her heartbeat, feeling the subtle differences in temperature along her skin, losing himself in the cadences of her laugh and the near-silent rhythm of her drawing breath....

 

 

_Jon? Are you there?_

(Stephen?)

_Come on, Stewart! You need to snap out of it...._

 

~*~

 

When Jon's hand fell still and his breathing evened out, Tracey was glad he'd been able to relax. It was too much to hope for that her insomniac husband had dozed off this quickly, even if he needed it. But the fact that he was calm rather than overstimulated, not even flinching when she kissed his forehead, seemed like a good sign.

A minute or two later, she tried to move.

"Honey, you need to let me up a minute," she said, when he didn't respond. The arm trapped under his body was on the verge of going numb. "My arm's starting to hurt...."

Jon didn't so much as twitch.

Maybe he really was asleep. Tracey craned her neck and confirmed that his eyes were closed, though his grip on her wrist was still tense. "Jon! Wake up!"

Again, no reaction...until she tried to shake loose her hand, thinking to give him a friendly shove. His fingers instantly tightened, just to hold her in place.

The Sentinel was absorbed in studying something, and he wasn't going to let it get away until he was done.

Tracey focused on taking deep breaths. Jon could be snapped out of these, right? But only if you removed the stimulus, and if she could get out of his grip she wouldn't have a problem in the first place. And he had to be zoned on hearing, too. Like he'd said. _Listening._

The noise-canceling headphones hadn't been invented that could block Sentinel hearing. As long as there was a path between the sound and their eardrums, even if it went through other parts of their head along the way, they could pick it up.

"After we get out of this, I'm having you re-tested," grumbled Tracey. Jon's hearing had tested on the low end of moderate, but those tests were about the sensitivity you could reliably reach, not your outer limit. And judging by the breakthrough he'd made with Stephen today, even his reliable reach was expanding.

 _Stephen._ She'd have to call Stephen. If only the nearest phone weren't somewhere way down by her feet.

"Jon. Honey," she said, voice starting to go thin. "I know you could hear this if you wanted to. Wake up."

Her arm was definitely numb now.

"You can feel my heartbeat, at least, right? Notice how it's gone up? There's a reason for that. Put it together, Jon. Come on."

No answer.

Swallowing hard, Tracey made an executive decision. "Nate!"

From the next room came the prompt shout: "What?"

"Sweetie, come in here, please," called Tracey. "I need you to give me a hand with something."

 

~*~

 

The entire _Vogue_ crew seemed to be glaring at Stephen as he stepped out from under the lights, still in makeup and twirling a prop umbrella. He ignored them. "Jon! I'm so glad you called. Listen, I've been feeling things about this afternoon, and I feel like maybe you had a feeling of awkwardness about —"

"Stephen, it's me. Tracey."

"Madam!" said Stephen, instinctively straightening his posture just in case Lady Stewart could sense that sort of thing from a distance. "In that case, I'm in the middle of a photoshoot, so if you could call back later? Or, better yet, if I could call you...."

"Jon's zoned. I need you to snap him out of it."

Well, Stephen wasn't inexplicably irritable, so there couldn't be anything too bad happening to Jon. "Have you tried getting in his way? I find that works very well."

"It isn't going to help. And we can't just wait. The way he's frozen, he's, well, sort of holding my arms down."

"If he's pinning your arms, how are you using a phone?" demanded Stephen.

"My son dialed, and he's holding it up." In an indulgent aside, she added, "And he's doing it very well."

Something about her voice did gooey things to Stephen's insides. Things that were not very compatible with his strong and manly exterior, even if he did have to be a strong and manly Guide. "Tell the kid to move it to Jon's ear, already."

"Thank you," said Lady Stewart, then "Nate, can you move the phone to Daddy's ear now? There we go." Her voice faded out....

"Jon?" said Stephen into the silence. "Are you there?"

No answer. But when Stephen took a risk and stretched out with his feelings, he was warmed with a faint glow of recognition.

"Come on, Stewart!" he ordered. "You need to snap out of it...."

"Mr. Colbert? Do you need anything? A glass of water?"

"No, I do not need a glass of water!" hissed Stephen at the poor hapless attendant. "I need to talk to my Sentinel, who has suffered in what was probably a vital quest to protect our fair city. Go babysit the photographer. I understand these creative types are very sensitive."

"Sorry, s—"

Anything else he said, Stephen missed, thanks to a gasp on the other end of the line. "S-Stephen? What...?"

"Jon! Sit up, already! And apologize to your lady wife."

"Oh my god." There was a scuffle and a shifting; Jon's voice fell away for a moment or two, then returned. "...okay. I'm okay. Thank you, Stephen. Sorry we had to interrupt your night."

"Do you need me to come over?" asked Stephen. "I'll need to get out of this suit, _Vogue_ would probably be unhappy if I ran off in it, but —"

"No...no, I'll be fine. Thanks."

"Are you sure? I mean, sure, it's a hallmark of liberal science to claim that when something happens, you can predict it might happen again in the future, but sometimes I think they might be on to something."

"It wasn't random, all right?" said Jon tersely. "I was trying...something, it's not important. Point is, obviously it didn't work out, and I'm not going to pull it again. Okay? I'll see you tomorrow, all right?"

"All right," said Stephen, slathering the words with disdain and disapproval and the full weight of exactly how not-all-right it was.

"Bye," said Jon, and the line went dead.

Stephen shoved his phone into the hands of the nearest non-hapless attendant (he had brought a couple of his own, wisely, since magazine people were always trying to offer him water at the wrong temperature or treat his skin with inferior moisturizer) and stalked back under the lights. "I'm ready for my close-up!"

Relief and irritation pressed in from all around him. The crew thought _he_ was being overdramatic! Well, let them. Other people's emotions couldn't swamp Stephen any more.

Because Jon loved him.

He could feel it constantly now, however close or far they were, a thin bright line running through everything. Jon loved him — and not in an icky gay way, either, which Stephen felt he could say with some authority, because he had been in enough icky gay situations to know what _those_ felt like. No, what Jon felt was pure and strong and fervent and always, always there.

And if Jon didn't want to take any steps toward letting Stephen love him back? That was his loss.


	4. Chapter 4

In the wake of the closing of the Creepy McStalkerface case (Jon had spotted him on four more tapes, two of them so clear that even the most obtuse jury would have to acknowledge it), Jon was back on top of his senses, and a fresh test ranked his Sentinel hearing in the twenty-ninth percentile for the tri-state area.

He didn't brag about it or anything, but in morning meeting the day afterward somebody asked, and it quickly became obvious that no work was going to get done until he fessed up.

"Anything over thirty-third percentile puts you on first responder duty, right?" said Wyatt, who had evidently been studying this stuff.

First responder duty was the one where you picked a handful of days to be on call, and at any minute they might send a car for you, to do something like stand outside a collapsing building and aim the firefighters inside toward trapped people with heartbeats. It was a daunting prospect, though at least you got to shadow another Sentinel-Guide pair the first time learning anything new, and could get a permanent exemption if it turned out you or your Guide couldn't hack it.

Jon shrugged. "It's based on absolute skill level, not relative...but yeah, I qualify."

"I'd be surprised if there's really that much of a difference across regions," remarked John. "Unless you're in an area with a low population that has quite a few low-sensitivity individuals who throw off the entire ranking. Such as Congress."

"Hey, I don't study this stuff," protested Jon. "I just take the tests and go where they tell me."

"So, twenty-ninth percentile," said Sam, tossing back her hair. "How good is that in, like, practical terms? I mean, how far can you hear in, say, in a typical office building? Just as an example."

"I can't separate out voices from the background noise," said Jon quickly. "Not unless you're right outside my door or something. I can't focus on things at that level without Stephen right there and actively talking me through it, all right? And I can't just take in everything, it devolves into this horrible cacophony and gives me a hell of a headache...." He paused, tilting his chin up and furrowing his brow as he felt the atmosphere in the room shift. "Okay, how long have you all been worrying about this?"

"You only told us about the upgrade five minutes ago," Wyatt reminded him.

"I've been pre-emptively worrying for the past month," put in John.

Sam nodded. "And you can _accidentally_ fixate on sounds at a serious distance, right?"

Great. Now they were worried again. _His_ people were thinking of their Sentinel as a...wait, no, he was letting his instincts run away with him. His _employees_ were thinking of their _boss_ as a potential threat. "I can...but listen, it's never voices, okay?" (Unless it was Stephen's voice, but since none of them were Stephen, they didn't need to know that.) "It's, uh. Remember when I made the building manager call in a plumber last week?"

There were nods from most of his writers. Anyone who had been in the field at the time (Wyatt, Sam, a couple of the field producers) took cues from them.

"I heard the drip. That's what my senses always zoom in on." Well, that and whatever noises Stephen was making. "Mechanical things, structural things, when they break."

"That is the saddest story ever," said Wyatt solemnly. "You should put it on the Internet some time. It would turn into a meme _so_ fast."

 

~*~

 

When a flushed and antsy Stephen locked his door and drew the blinds the moment his lunch break began, he wasn't even thinking about Jon.

He was mostly thinking about his guest, truth be told. One of those older male political figures, with a square jaw, piercing blue eyes, and thick hair just starting to go grey at the temples. Sort of like Eliot Spitzer, with more hair and less ridiculous ears. And everyone knew where Spitzer had gone right after sharing a desk with Stephen.

If he didn't do something about it now, Stephen was going to spend more of the interview blushing than nailing.

He fell back across his couch, the one that had been new when the studio was first bequeathed to him, and rubbed lotion into his hands. The fantasy was easy to conjure up after reporting on its real-life equivalent across a dozen different political careers. A handsome and powerful man, accustomed via charm or money (but mostly money) to getting whatever he wanted. And right now he wanted Stephen.

There would be a token protest, because that was the done thing, but in the end Stephen would have to give in....

His hand had settled into a deliciously steady rhythm when Stephen felt a by-now familiar wash of someone's emotions. Recognition. Embarrassment.

"Oh, for god's sake, Jon, don't _spy_ on me," he moaned, though it made his breath pick up to feel the reaction that proved Jon was listening. Shock and shame, mostly. But...was that...a spark of interest?

Jon's attention drew away before Stephen could tease out the subtleties. He didn't go chasing after it; that would have sent entirely the wrong message. Besides, follow-ups were for journalists, not from-the-gut pundits like himself.

And if his fantasy partner after that was a little shorter than usual, with thinner and greyer hair than he tended to prefer, so what? It just meant he'd been reminded of the sexy potential in those particular traits, that was all.

 

~*~

 

Jon wasn't even getting cuddles at home any more. He could see Tracey tensing whenever he so much as hugged one of the kids, and it stung.

In a dream he was the lynx, nonverbal this time, wandering the jungle alone. He was looking for something — not the hedgehog, though it seemed to be at the end of every path he tried — with no success. The trails were old and faded; the sky through the breaks in the canopy was dark.

"I found some books," Tracey said one morning over the crossword. "Nothing helpful. There's a support group upstate, but it's Sentinel-Guide, not Sentinel-partner."

"Maybe we could go with Stephen," offered Jon. "Or he and I could try to work something out."

As expected, Tracey grimaced. "Honey, I know you both mean well, and that he's been very helpful to you in some areas...but when it comes to people I'd rather not have knowing the details of my sex life, it's him and any Republican senator at the top of the list."

"Uh," said Jon, twirling his pen. "About that."

The look on her face....

"I didn't tell him, babe. I swear I didn't. His emotional sensitivity was up really high, and he picked up on the right combination of feelings...listen, it's not like he knows details, okay? Nothing about what we do, what you like...all he knows is how, um, how overwhelming it is for me."

"He has no right," said Tracey bitterly.

"It was an accident!" cried Jon, thinking of the intimate moment of Stephen's he himself had overheard earlier that week. "He's got the empathy stuff under control now. He won't do it again."

"If he did, would you know?"

That brought Jon up short. Thing was, he _would_ know, or at least would be able to find out. He could ask Stephen outright and listen for the same increase in heartbeat that a lie detector measured, or he could corner Stephen in the dream-jungle and demand the truth, on a level where lies would be impossible to slip past. And he couldn't imagine explaining either method to Tracey without upsetting her more.

While he was caught in the grip of hesitation, Tracey took his silence as a no. "That's what I was afraid of."

 

~*~

 

Jon left for work in a stormy mood that showed no sign of lifting. He couldn't feel enthusiastic about any of the segments pitched in morning meeting. He slashed a pen right through an early manuscript he was supposed to be proofing, leaving the blue pages bleeding ink. He was gearing up for an actual fight with one of the animators over the size of an explosion graphic in progress for the DNC when someone called his name. "What?" he snapped over his shoulder.

"Uh, Jon? There's nobody there."

In spite of himself, Jon deflated a bit. "My bad," he said to the unnerved graphics guy. "Could've sworn I heard —"

"Jon! Listen up!"

"Oh," said Jon, recognizing the voice now. "Sorry, I have to take this." And he focused his attention on the voice.

"Good, you noticed me," said Stephen, so close and clear that Jon had to fight the reflex to answer back as if they were connected by satellite instead of just his hypersensitive ears. "Look, I don't know what's going on, but you are seriously grouchy and it's disturbing everybody's work environment. Not just for your people, but for mine, since I pick up on it and then get stuck with a short temper and very little tolerance for mistakes."

And that was different from any other day at the _Report_ how...?

Stephen didn't miss his amusement. "Don't make fun of me!" he complained. "Just fix it! Or, if it's one of those problems that can be solved with excess shouting, as I believe most problems are: call me over so I can fix it for you. Or come over here, if it'll keep you from hassling your poor under-appreciated drones. I don't care what you do, but do _something_. Colbert out."

 

~*~

 

Five minutes later, someone buzzed Stephen that Jon was on his way up.

Stephen had no idea what he was going to do. All he knew was that his gut wanted his Sentinel beside him, and his gut had yet to steer him wrong.

Jon had dark circles under his eyes when he arrived, and wouldn't stop fidgeting, even after allowing Stephen to shepherd him into an armchair. "I can't stay long, okay? Just a few minutes. If that isn't enough to cheer me up, so be it."

"There's no reason you should be acting so maladjusted," Stephen informed him. "Your senses are totally under control, unless you do something stupid like try to extend them without help. And you have a wonderful Guide who, according to a very reliable diagnosis made after five minutes of conversation with somebody who's never seen me in person, might be some kind of prodigy."

Jon's eyes fluttered closed. "I'm lucky to have you," he said softly.

Praise was almost never fulfilling for Stephen. He could feel when it was shallow or gratuitous; he knew when it was insincere, or when he was being humored. He craved it anyway, of course, but compliments like that were about as helpful as scraps tossed to a starving man.

The feelings he was getting from Jon right now, on the other hand...they were complex and layered, more so than he had the sensitivity to decipher, and they were real. Solid. The emotional equivalent of a hearty beef-and-potato stew.

Letting himself settle on the arm of the chair, Stephen leaned on Jon's shoulders to knead the muscles around his neck. "I'm not going to keep harping on this point, so listen carefully," he said. "You did a...a very adequate job on your first case. And I am accordingly not-horrified to associate with you."

A sudden rush of emotion from Jon left him breathless. Gratitude. Appreciation. Tender warmth. "Geez, Stephen, from you that was practically fawning adoration."

"See, this is why I like to keep expectations low," said Stephen, though it was hard to sound as authoritative when his voice was still shaking. "If I complimented you all the time, you wouldn't have gotten nearly as happy just now."

"If you complimented people all the time," countered Jon, "you wouldn't have to deal with people feeling angry and resentful around you."

"Would so. What if they came to expect it, and then one day I forgot? Then they would be angry _and_ sad. Easier to avoid getting people's hopes up."

"Easier," agreed Jon. He was drifting in thought now, not focusing on Stephen. "But worth it? If you don't risk having some bad times, you'll never get any of the really good times...." His attention pulled back to Stephen, mostly. "I just...I wish more people could see you the way I see you."

Oh, those feelings. Jon loved Stephen. Loved him! Didn't think he was perfect — thank goodness, that would have been way too much pressure — but loved him in spite of his prickliness and inflexibility and anger and all the other traits Jon inexplicably thought of as character flaws. Saw him as charming and cute and basically good. Trusted him. Loved him....

Jon stood up, yanking out of his grip so abruptly that Stephen nearly fell into the chair. "I shouldn't have come."

"Don't know what you're talking about," panted Stephen. He was breathing heavily — when had that started?

"Of course you do!" cried Jon, rocking back on his heels. "You're not dense! You can talk about pure virtuous Sentinel-Guide bonding all you want, but that right there? That was going in the least virtuous direction possible and you know it."

"Jon, you're getting hysterical. I have it on very good authority —"

"Your trashy Sentinel romance novels, you mean."

"The disclaimers in the front say they're based on extensive research! And they're not trashy, there's not even any sex in them —"

"Only in the sense that they never mention anybody's penis! God, Stephen, in every story I've ever heard you describe — the tender caresses, the snuggling, hair-stroking, waxing poetic about each other's sculpted chests, sleeping in the same bed, taking baths together, the one with the _magical healing French kissing_ — it's all about sex. They're romances for people who don't want to admit they're reading romances. Gay romances, in the case of all the ones _you_ read, which explains the not wanting to admit it."

Stephen's gut was a whirl of confusion. His mouth fell open, but he couldn't muster up an answer. Jon was angry at him, and frustrated by him, and still loved him, all at once. His first instinct was to get shouty and defensive, but this was like nothing else he'd ever gotten shouty and defensive over.

Not only that, Jon was entirely convinced he was right — and what if he _was?_ What if the stoic and platonic, but frequently physical, adoration and intimacy in Stephen's books was connected to having the hots for someone? What did that mean about Stephen's feelings when he read (and reread, and re-reread) those scenes? What did it mean about Stephen's feelings for Jon, or the way tears were springing to his eyes now, head swimming with phrases like _Sentinel-Guide romance_ and _not wanting to admit it_?

And what did it mean about the yearning Jon was feeling for him even now?

"I," said Jon, drained from the outburst. "I'll go. I'm sorry. I'll just go...."

Stephen leaped to his feet, pushed Jon against the nearest bit of blank wall, and kissed him.

Jon met the kiss immediately, clawing at Stephen's back to hold him in place, hips rocking up to meet Stephen's. The brick gave him leverage to push, and then it was Stephen flipped against the wall, undulating against the mortar while Jon pinned him in place with both whole forearms on his chest, from elbow to splayed palms. "Stephen. We can't," he said, making it sound less like an order than a plea.

"Bet we could," panted Stephen, nudging his thigh between Jon's legs. If only he could turn Jon on enough to wipe all those oily guilty feelings from his consciousness....

Jon's head dipped in despair, hairline bumping against Stephen's collarbones. "Dammit, Stephen, don't do this to me."

And either Stephen was imagining things, or the love flowing from Jon had started turning sour....

"What if it's the right thing to do?" demanded Stephen. Anything to push Jon back to that brief shining place of happiness again.

All he got was bitter skepticism. "What are you talking about?"

"You're still having trouble with your marriage, right? Your deep, spiritual marriage," Stephen added hastily. "Once because you tried to go into Sentinel focus without me, but mostly because you're going into sensory overload at the sexy touching — the deep and spiritual sexy touching! — of your lady wife." God, the mental images of Jon and sexy touching... _Shake it off, Col-bert!_ "And unlike zoning, you _can_ avoid overload without me there. As long as I've shown you how."

"You want to Guide me back to having proper sex with my wife," groaned Jon. "She wouldn't buy it for a second. She doesn't even like me talking to you about this."

"She doesn't have to know!" Stephen's heart was hammering against Jon's wrist. "Think of it like a surprise present you're getting her. Would it be good etiquette to tell her how much it cost? No. No it would not. Miss Manners would not approve. Miss Manners would also probably not approve of giving someone your working dick as a present, but in this case I think it's appropriate."

"Fuck," muttered Jon. He wanted to make himself believe it. If only he would use his brain a little less, he could have settled fully into the truthiness already.

It was a wasted effort since Jon wasn't looking him in the eye, but Stephen arched his eyebrows anyway. "That's the idea."

 

~*~

 

The nerves under Jon's skin were electric, the pit of his stomach liquid-hot. Part of him wanted to cover Stephen's body with his own and catalog every noise Stephen made approaching orgasm, and part of him just wanted to lick and grope and thrust along with any reasonably attractive adult whose touch didn't destroy his stamina. It scared him that he couldn't tell which desire was stronger.

He was giggling, vaguely aware how high-pitched and desperate it sounded. "You think you can do this, huh? Then let's have a demonstration. Talk me into turning off. Right now."

No point in going for it if Stephen couldn't un-stimulate him in the first place. He wouldn't be left with even the flimsiest excuse....

"Tell me what you hear," said Stephen.

"You," said Jon instantly. Stephen's thudding heart, the expansion of his lungs with every breath, even the wetness when he gulped and the churning of his stomach....

"Other than me!" moaned Stephen.

Jon opened his eyes, and Stephen instantly dominated that sense too. Specifically, the exact pattern of folds and creases and stretching that made up the tent in Stephen's pants. Right. This wasn't fair to Stephen either. "Cars," panted Jon. "Water in the pipes. Keyboards...somebody laughing...a stapler...birds...."

"Focus on the keyboards," said Stephen. Though still husky, his voice was taking on that calming quality that Guides were supposed to display all the time. "Focus on how hard people are typing, how fast, how close or far each one is. You should be able to count how many are in use. Do that."

Jon tried.

It was a good distraction. When Stephen led him away from the wall, he stumbled along obediently, barely aware which way they were going. His awareness and all his other senses were set aside in the name of concentration.

No new stimulus was able to snap him out of it until a spray of cold water hit him full in the face.

"You can be a real dick sometimes, you know that?" muttered Jon, toweling himself off while Stephen dunked his own head under the chilly office shower.

"Did it work or not?" snapped Stephen from under the spray.

"It worked."

"Good. Then unless you want to have the sex now, you should probably leave before I try to jump you again."

 

~*~

 

When Jon came home that night, he smelled like Stephen's cologne.

Tracey didn't comment. Suspicious though she was of Stephen's intentions, she couldn't blame Jon for accepting hugs when Stephen was the only one giving them out.

But she was tense and worrying long after Jon had fallen asleep.

 

~*~

 

When the car with Jon in it arrived at the meeting point, he was zoned. Stephen broke away from the other Sentinel-Guide pair, not even taking the time to say _excuse me a minute_ , and ran to greet him.

"There's some kind of rattling under your hood," Jon informed the driver as Stephen helped him out. "Should probably get that checked out."

They were gathered along with a handful of cops in the shadow of tall and battered apartment buildings, nursing cups of coffee against the grey autumn chill. Cigarette butts littered the sidewalk; waves of identical brightly-colored concert posters were papered on the walls at eye level. Jon shook hands with the other Sentinel and Guide — Vinette and Alicia, the former a young woman with a cloud of dark curls and sculpted arm muscles, the latter in a conservative suit and with enough lines on her face to pass for her Sentinel's mother — then did a double-take at Vinette. "You're the black jaguar!"

Stephen coughed. "Wow, Jon. Racist much?" (He didn't see race, but if you'd told him Vinette was black he would have believed you, because come on, her name was _Vinette_.)

"It's her spirit animal," stammered Jon. "You know, a panther. Except that panthers aren't one species, just any big-ish cat with solid black fur, and...you were a jaguar, right?"

"Oh! You're the lynx!" said Vinette. "Should've known from the hair. Come on, let's get you debriefed."

As the mission was explained to Jon, Stephen had to keep a tight rein on his empathy to avoid being overwhelmed. A twelve-year-old girl had gone missing. Someone had seen her get into a van, and someone else had seen a van with similar markings in this neighborhood, and that was about all the police knew. Her mother had provided photos for ID, plus an unwashed T-shirt (Vinette had Sentinel scent as well as hearing) and a cell phone video from the past school year: the kid giving a presentation on how magnets worked.

"We cover the same area. From different directions, that's all," Alicia explained to Stephen. "If the girl is in the half where you start and your Sentinel does not hear her voice, we will come through after. She will be found."

 

~*~

 

Each group covered the territory on foot. Two plainclothes cops leading the way, one Sentinel and one Guide following behind.

Four hours and some uncounted number of blocks later, Jon was short of breath. His calf muscles were locking up from the long walk. Stephen hadn't tried to put a comforting hand on him today, which saved him some guilt, but meant he kept getting distracted by touch stimuli: the seams in his clothing, little bumps in the ground. His lefty soul was increasingly scandalized at the violation of privacy, though he was taking care never to stay more than a second or two on each voice, and most of what he heard was pitch and cadence rather than identifiable words.

And for all the voices he'd sifted through, none of them were the missing child's.

"What if she's unconscious?" he murmured, for Stephen's ears only. "Drugged, asleep...or what if she's too scared to talk? Or she's fine, but doesn't have anyone to talk to?"

"Then she is being very inconsiderate," huffed Stephen, "and maybe not being rescued will teach her a lesson."

Jon didn't try to talk to him again after that.

He was standing on a street corner, looking back and trying to re-listen to everything (there was a pipe about to break in 404; somebody ought to take a look at that), when someone took his arm. Jon flinched — but it wasn't Stephen, it was Vinette. "We're done," she said. "Remember what we said before about talking if you needed it?"

Jon ran a chilly hand through his hair. He noticed Alicia talking to Stephen, presumably feeling him out on the same issue, and hoped she could recognize that his problem was _I'm instinctively lashing out at anything connected with my Sentinel's distress_ and not _I genuinely do not care about the fate of this kidnapped twelve-year-old_. "Yeah. I think I'm okay."

"You sure? No offense, but you smell pretty stressed."

"I want to keep going, obviously," said Jon with a forced shrug. "But that would be bad. Right? Waste of, uh," he waved vaguely at himself, "police resources. They've got their own investigation going on, and probably know what they're doing...at least I hope they do, because that's what my tax dollars pay them for, right? Wouldn't want to get in the way. I'm not a vigilante detective, here."

"Not a vigilante detective," agreed the other Sentinel. "Yeah, that doesn't work out so well in real life as it does on TV."

It was basically a paraphrase of what the officer in charge had told them earlier, but somehow it wasn't until he heard it from a peer that Jon felt it really sink in. For a moment he wondered how much his famous distrust of politicians and pundits was deserved, and how much was this deep-seated instinct that if someone wasn't a Sentinel, they probably didn't know what they were doing.

 

~*~

 

It was Jon who pulled Stephen out of a car this time, and Stephen instinctively followed before he remembered that the driver was supposed to be dropping them off separately. "Wait, what are we doing? Where are we?"

"My building," said Jon, leading Stephen briskly up the front steps. He nodded to the doorman and made a beeline for the elevators.

"Hang on!" said Stephen in a hushed voice, skidding to a halt and hanging back as Jon hit the button. He had put up his spines that afternoon, and wasn't sure it was safe to unroll yet...but the blankness he was getting from Jon was unnerving, and even anger or disgust would have given him some clue what he was supposed to do here. "I was not prepared for this! What am I supposed to say to your family?"

Jon gave him a level look. "My family's at the house tonight."

"Oh," said Stephen.

This was it, then. The big invitation. Stephen had pictured something a lot more emotional, with a few of those tender caresses and Jon's shy, crooked smile; this setup would have fit better in a tawdry fantasy than a soaring crescendo of intimate affection. But maybe that was coming later. Jon's love for him was still around, tangled up in other feelings though it was. Besides, it was Jon's job to protect him. Stephen had to keep trusting in that.

The elevator doors grumbled open, and Stephen followed Jon in.

 

~*~

 

"Hey, babe. Finished the job. They dropped me at the apartment, so I'm going to shower and have a snack, and catch a cab home this evening, okay?"

"Jon! I was expecting you half an hour ago. What happened?"

"Oh, uh, you know, one thing and another...."

Tracey decided to cut to the chase. "Did Stephen keep you?"

"What?" stammered Jon, in the most unconvincing tone possible.

"Honey, it's okay," said Tracey, before her husband could tie himself in knots trying to cover for his friend. "In fact, I was just thinking maybe I've been too hard on him lately."

Jon's reply was a long time coming. "Really?"

The shakiness in his voice was what convinced Tracey she was on to something. She papered over any hints of suspicion with her best "talking to rich Manhattan moms about their spoiled kids" voice. "Really. He gets touchy when he's nervous, right? That, and the way he's been all over you...it's just his way of expressing that he's worried about you."

"That's it," said Jon, letting out a breath. "That's exactly it. Thank you, Trace."

"Hang on, I'm not finished. I was going to say: I think we should take another shot at inviting him over for dinner. Maybe, if things go well, consider talking to him about...things. You know."

"I know," said Jon. He sounded wiped out. "Sorry, this was really kind of a soul-killing day...can we talk about it when I get in?"

"Sure thing. See you soon."

 

~*~

 

Stephen sidled out of the guest bathroom shirtless, barefoot, and rubbing lotion into his hands. Jon, sitting on the mattress with his clothes unchanged, barely glanced up from his phone (though he didn't get the luxury of failing to notice that Stephen was beautiful, graceful and tousle-haired, solid and vulnerable all at once).

"We can't do this," he said, hoarse.

Stephen stopped in his tracks, one foot pointed and tucked behind the other. "What?"

"Tracey's changed her mind. Wants you to try talking this out with us."

"And what if that doesn't work?" demanded Stephen.

"Then...I don't know. Then I guess we're back where we started. But even if it doesn't...I can't do this and then go sit at a table with both of you there and look her in the eye. I'm sorry."

Stephen's face had gone stony. "Sorry," he echoed. "I have pure and manly adoring feelings for you and you're _sorry_."

"Stephen, be reasonable. This was always a last resort. You knew it wasn't —"

"Just — just stop talking, Jon!" yelled Stephen. "Isn't it bad enough I have to feel you feeling it?"

There was nothing Jon could say to make it better, so he didn't try. "There's food in the fridge. Help yourself if you're hungry," he said, ghosting past Stephen. "I need to get a shower."


	5. Chapter 5

After much wavering, a round of Formidable Opponent, and half a dozen Google searches on "how to change your Sentinel" (apparently it was possible, but it required a bunch of scary drugs and you had to have replacements chosen already so you could bond with them right away), Stephen decided to go.

"You see, Jimmy Fallon, I'm being polite," he explained, as he and his seasonal BFF went wine shopping. In an uspcale place, so they were surrounded by dark wood and darker bottles, and not much light. It made him feel like a goth, only richer. "Because I was raised in the South, and we know from hospitality. But I am going to be stoic and unemotional the whole time, and then take off for a long vacation in the Caribbean. Alone."

"Uh-huh," said Jimmy. "Don't you have to be in town next week for the election, Stephen Colbert?"

"What are you, in bed with the fact-checkers now?" complained Stephen. "Facts are for liberals, as the Romney campaign has made very clear. So are emotions. Now you need to help me pick out a bottle, so I don't end up with something bitter and easily smashable."

 

~*~

 

"Honey, I swear, I can watch the casserole," said Jon. "Probably safer than having me drive, too."

Ever since summer, their family vehicles, as well as the company car, had been getting all the recommended tune-ups exactly on time. Nobody wanted Jon to zone on the rattle of a loose bolt. And even that was only about making him comfortable as a passenger. Viacom had never liked him driving in the first place, and his wife's suspicion of everything he touched lately certainly extended to steering wheels.

"You're not going far," pointed out Tracey. As Jon was about to express his shock, she went on, "And it still hasn't gotten that cold outside. You could walk."

"I could," admitted Jon. He still had some lingering soreness from the long walk through the city the week before, but he sensed this was not the time to plead sympathy. Besides, the idea of taking an extended schlep with his daughter had its appeal. "But what if I don't get back in time for dinner?"

"Is Stephen usually on time for anything?"

Jon managed an uncomfortable laugh. On the one hand, he didn't want to seem like he was encouraging or engaging in Stephen-bashing; on the other, well, she had a point. "I guess not. But, you know, just in case...."

"Toss me your phone," said Tracey. "I'll text him while you're getting Maggie in her coat."

 

~*~

 

Carrying a nicely beribboned bottle of wine, and muttering about stupid last-minute time changes, Stephen strolled up the gravel of Jon's driveway.

Well, one of Jon's driveways. For one of Jon's houses. But this time, it was the place where his family was staying that day. And sure enough it was Jon's wife who opened the door.

"Mrs. Stewart," said Stephen stiffly, trying to shake her hand and give her the bottle all at once. "Pleased to re-meet you."

Lady Stewart opted to forgo the handshake and take the wine. She put it on the nearest flat surface, though, which was the top of a piano. Seemed like a weird place for alcohol. "Come on in."

"Might want to put that somewhere else," said Stephen as he followed her into the living room. If the Stewarts wanted advice, he might as well start giving it right away. "You don't want the kids getting into...where are the kids, anyway?" He swiveled his head; the house seemed awfully quiet. "And where's Jon?"

"Jon's taking Maggie to a sleepover," said Lady Stewart, almost brightly. Stephen wasn't feeling any cheer from her, though. "And Nate happens to be at sleepaway camp this week."

Stephen stopped in his tracks. "I don't understand."

"Look, Stephen, I'll make this simple." She spun on her heel and faced him with folded arms. "I need to know exactly what your intentions are toward my husband. What they have been, and what they're going to be in the future. And...and so help me, if you give me the wrong answer, I don't care how hard it is — I will see to it that he never talks to you again."

 

~*~

 

"And you're not serving anything with ham in it, are you? Because this kid, I tell you, we're not pandering to their every food-related whim or everything, but I figure every kid gets to have a thing they find so gross we won't force them to eat it, and for Maggie, it's —"

"Look, buddy," interrupted Clara's dad. "This your first sleepover?"

"Well, no, I mean, I didn't have a ton of friends as a kid, but when I was fifteen...oh, you mean my first time sending _Maggie_ to a sleepover." Jon tugged at his collar. "Uh. Yes. Yes, it is."

"Uh-huh. Well, here's the deal. Your daughter is gonna eat a ton of junk food, stay up way past her bedtime, and spend the next month quoting whatever Disney movies we put on. And it's gonna be okay. Okay?"

"Right," said Jon. "Sorry."

Clara's dad clapped him on the back. "Good man. Go enjoy your night off."

Jon was about to reply when something caught his ear. "You have a radio on?"

"Hm? Sharon's probably got the TV in the kitchen. Likes a distraction when she's baking. You using your Sentinel powers to hear that?"

"They're not really powers," said Jon, shuffling and trying to deflect. It was one thing to answer questions from the correspondents he'd known and worked with for years, another to get curious prodding from a guy he only knew because their kids were both in Mrs. Coulson's class. "And I was probably just at the right angle for the acoustics, or something. You have a good night, now."

Once back on the sidewalk, Jon pulled out his phone and fired up the 4G. His hearing had snapped to attention at the name of the (previously?) missing twelve-year-old, and picked up alongside it phrases like _suspect arrested in the kidnapping of_ and _safely returned to her family_. If it was true, it would be on the Internet...

...and sure enough, there it was in his Google alerts. Below it was an email from Vinette that had apparently been mass-mailed to her Guide, Jon, Stephen, and another Sentinel-Guide pair who must have worked on the case. _Well done,_ it said, and _Join us for dinner to celebrate?_

Jon could answer later. He slipped the phone back into his pocket and set off, taking a leisurely pace. With one major weight off his chest and plenty of time to spare until his presence was needed, he might as well take the time to enjoy the scenery.

 

~*~

 

A hot, stinging wave of emotion ran through Stephen, fury and shame and fear blending in his veins like the world's most stressful cocktail. His first thought, as ever, was to yell; on second thought, he didn't dare. It was one thing to contemplate un-Guiding himself: they could have gone back to the way they used to be, and he could even still shout at people on Jon's behalf if necessary. But to be cut off, entirely, from his most senior Best Friend Forever?

"Fine!" he said, too loudly. "Let me sit down first, okay? It's stressful work, giving completely innocuous answers."

It was the wrong thing to say. As he sank into the nearest armchair, he already felt like Lady Stewart's suspicion was punching him in the face. And he had just finished steeling himself to have all the walls up, to feel no unnecessary emotions tonight.

But since there was no other way to be sure of the Right Answer, he let himself open.

And _ohfuck_ —

_—anger hurt suspicion fear mistrust determination Stephen you're the problem you're a threat —_

"You're serious," he breathed, clinging to the armrests like he'd just pitched down the first drop of a roller coaster. "Dead serious. You'd do it, you'd use the kids against him, whatever you had to do, but you wouldn't have to, don't you know that? Don't you know anything? He's always chosen you!"

She hadn't known. She was surprised, confused. It blended with the torrent of other emotions she was balancing, all painful, all aimed right at Stephen, oh God he might as well have been a kid again. He couldn't turn it off. He couldn't focus, couldn't reach for Jon, and with no Jon he couldn't turn it off.

"You're scared," he said out loud, as much to filter the torrent for his own sanity as to be heard. "Of what? Scared I'll hurt him. Scared I don't care enough about — no, that's stupid too, I care about him more than — than anyone."

"Stop reading my mind!" ordered Tracey, shaken now.

"I am _empathizing_ , madam!" yelled Stephen. "And no, I do not have base sexual designs on your husband — at least, I didn't — he started it!"

This time it was Tracey who had to sit down. The shock had wiped everything else from her attention. "What are you talking about?"

Stephen folded his arms, hugging himself. "We didn't have sex!" he said quickly, in the faint hope of starting this off on a positive note. "There was one time we met in a Sentinel dream so he could help me dial back on the oversensitivity, which he had to do because it was starting to hurt even being _around_ people, and he swears it was sexual but I maintain that it was just very emotional spirit-cuddling. And then we made out, which I guess I kind of started, but it was his idea — no, don't cry! He made me stop!"

Tracey's eyes kept right on getting swimmier. "Is that supposed to help?"

"He loves you so much." Stephen gulped over the lump in his throat. "I don't...he loves me too, but maybe it isn't the same...maybe he never would have thought sex things about me if everything had been normal with you. The only reason we got as close as we did is because he was hoping it might fix things with you."

Her emotions kept shifting places; it was impossible to keep up. For the moment, anger and despair seemed to be leading the dance. "And you went along with it? Thought you could seize the opportunity, jump him while you had the chance?"

"No!" wailed Stephen. He couldn't even tell if this was working. All he knew was that nothing was under his control and everything hurt. "I went along with it because I love him and I want him to be happy!"

He pulled off his glasses and sobbed manfully into the knitted cuff of his sweater.

 

~*~

 

Jon wasn't using his Sentinel senses as he toed off his sneakers, so it wasn't until he was halfway down the hall that he realized Tracey was not alone in the house.

He found them in the TV room, which had toys on the floor and a half-finished Lego model on the table and was generally in no fit state to be entertaining guests. Someone, presumably Tracey, had put together a makeshift cheese platter. Stephen was...laughing?...under his breath.

"Am I late?" asked Jon, coming in. "Sorry, hope I didn't keep you...waiting...."

He trailed off as both faced him, taut with shared purpose. Stephen's face was flushed around the eyes and nose, as if he'd been crying. And Tracey...god, she was noticeably bloodshot too.

All the masks, all the cleverness, all the avoidance and double-talk and denial Jon had been planning to use tonight evaporated in that moment. "Okay," he said instead. "How much trouble am I in?"

 

~*~

 

Tracey patted Stephen on the hand as she got up. "I didn't entirely mean this before," she said to her husband, "but I do now. I misjudged Stephen. I was too hard on him, and not sympathetic enough to what was really going on."

Jon's complexion had taken on an unhealthy greyish cast. "Oh!" he said. "Oh, that's...that's good. Right?"

Tracey smacked him across the face — hard enough to sting. "I also misjudged you!"

"I'm sorry!" cried Jon immediately. "Sweetheart, I am so, so sorry — I was wrong, it was stupid, I never for a second should have considered —" He broke off with an anguished glance in Stephen's direction.

"All this time, I was worried about _him_ using _you_ ," snapped Tracey, while Jon rubbed his smarting cheek. "That man is in love with you, and you've been dragging his heart through the shredder over it! If you've only ever felt for him like a friend, then you can't do this any more. To either of us! Understand?"

"Of course. Of course I do."

"And —" She swallowed. "And if you do feel — more — for him, then...."

Jon's voice dropped, though it wouldn't give him any real privacy against Stephen's empathy. "Trace, I love _you_."

"I know," hissed Tracey. "Do you love him too?"

She was fairly clear on the rest from Stephen's tearful perspective added to her own. And she didn't think he was lying, either, considering how easy it would have been for him to tell her only things she wanted to hear. So if Stephen's insecurity on this point turned out to be unfounded...if her husband had indeed gone and fallen for his Guide on top of his wife....

It wasn't a place she had ever imagined her life ending up. But then, neither was being married to a Sentinel in the first place.

"If I let myself," said Jon, his voice a raspy whisper. "If I start...I won't be able to stop."

Tracey nodded, and took his arm. "Then come _here_."

 

~*~

 

Stephen sat up straighter as Jon was led over to the coffee table. "Can I hit him too?" he asked, only half kidding.

"No," decided Tracey. "You're bigger than he is. It wouldn't be fair."

"You're ganging up on me," said Jon weakly. The steadiness Stephen had always found so comforting in him was temporarily at sea; he didn't seem to know how to feel yet.

Well, satisfying as it was, maybe it was time for Stephen to give him a few clues. To Guide him, even. Addressing Tracey once more, he said, "Can I kiss him, then?"

The corners of Tracey's mouth twitched upward, and Stephen wished someone had let him know years ago that every once in a while, open and honest conversations led to something other than pain and exploitation. "I think he owes you that."

Stephen squeezed himself over to one side of his armchair so Jon could rest one knee on the cushion and sink down over him. A hand landed on his shoulder, still with a lingering chill from the outdoors that Stephen (whose sweater had come off at some point in the middle of the sobbing) could feel through his navy polo.

Cold or not, when it moved slowly down the slope, it was almost...caress-like.

Jon was tense, lips slightly parted, eyes bright blue. Stephen had to curl one soft hand around the back of his neck and pull him the rest of the way. But once their mouths met, he picked up the idea quickly, pressing Stephen into a deep kiss before dropping softer ones against his eyelids, his temples — Stephen gasped and twisted his fingers in Jon's shirt — the corner of his jaw.

"Is this really okay?" breathed Jon at last, with a dizzying sheen of wonder. He turned back to Tracey, who had both hands pressed over her mouth, but nodded.

Stephen tugged on Jon's sleeve. "She's sort of insecure," he explained once he had Jon's attention. "She's going to need you to cuddle her a lot, when you're not busy cuddling me, that is. And whatever you do, don't remind her how many Emmys you have. That tends to make people feel inadequate."

Jon started laughing, face resting in Stephen's under-coiffed hair. Tracey was snickering too, not unkindly. And under it all — Stephen closed his eyes and let out a long hum of pleasure as it hit him — love, shakier and more fragile than it used to be, but not soured. Not _wrong_. And the room was full of it, like the fresh smell of air after a thunderstorm.

Tracey took the armchair beside them, chin resting on her hand. Jon braced himself with one arm against the back of Stephen's chair and let the other fall in between them, reaching just far enough that Tracey's fingers could link with his.

"So, uh," said Jon, more settled now. "What exactly are we talking about here? Some kind of time-share agreement, or, you know, threesomes, or...?"

Tracey winced. "Just because I don't see Stephen as a threat to my marriage any more doesn't mean I want to get naked in front of him. No offense."

"None taken. And you could always sit back and watch us," Stephen offered. His arms were looped comfortably around Jon's waist. "That way you could keep all your clothes on. Me too, depending on what we did."

"Let's table that," stammered Tracey. (Although judging by the sudden wave of confused sexual interest Stephen was sensing from her, it wasn't going to be tabled indefinitely.)

"We don't have to decide anything right now," said Jon quickly. "I was just wondering. I mean, if you two had any preferences...I'm entirely at your mercy, here."

Except that he wasn't. There was something he was hoping for, and Stephen wasn't so drunk on affection that he couldn't be annoyed with Jon for not spitting it out. "Say the thing you're thinking about," he demanded, poking Jon in the side.

Jon blushed. "Well," he said, letting go of his wife's hand to tug at his collar. "I was sorta hoping you could guide me through focusing my senses on Tracey without zoning. Nothing sexual yet, just, y'know looking into her eyes and stuff."

He was palpably worried that one or both of them would be affronted by the idea. But Tracey made a happy little gasp, and Stephen, who could have basked in that kind of goodwill for hours, nuzzled Jon's chest. "'Kay."

 

~*~

 

The dream-jungle was bright and rustled with wind. Instead of the ruins in the field, Stephen found himself at the edge of a wide brown river. Mangroves on stilted roots gathered at the banks; their leaves spread over the rock-strewn patch of sand where Stephen and his spirit hedgehog were chilling out.

Stephen pushed aside a couple of lumps of stone to make a spot for him to sit while waiting for Jon. He wasn't about to use any of those roots' knotted arches as a chair; he knew the rebuke for Old Man Willow by heart, of course, but he had no idea whether it worked on other species of tree.

 _This is nice,_ he said to his hedgehog. _Isn't it nice?_

The hedgehog made a snuffly little barking noise that Stephen took for agreement.

Of course, anything would have been nice right about now. Stephen could have dreamed he was in the foothills of Mount Doom itself, and he would have been thrilled, knowing that his real body was currently spooning with Jon's. (It turned out all three of them fit in the bed if you cuddled close enough, which both Stephen and Tracey turned out to be comfortable with so long as Jon was safely in between them.)

Stephen kept an eye on the forest, assuming Jon would approach from that direction. Sure enough, it wasn't long before he spotted a flash of grey fur between the trees...

And then the animal silhouette emerged onto the sand, and, whoa, that was not a lynx.

Stephen leaped to his feet while his hedgehog rolled up into a ball of spines. _Who are you? What are you doing in my dream? I'm warning you, buddy, if you try anything, my Sentinel will come down on you so hard —_

The grey wolf sat back on its haunches and grinned. At least, Stephen hoped that was a grin, and not showing off its teeth. _Be cool, man! I'm just here to say hi. Wasn't even sure this was a feasible mode of contact, you being on the other side of the country and all. But it looks like your exceptional receptivity translates to the oneirological as well!_

Stephen glared. _Stop trying to show off with your fancy word-talk!_

 _Sorry! Habit,_ said the wolf sheepishly. _See, I do Sentinel-Guide studies for a living. Was working on a thesis in the subject before I found out I was a Guide, and I tend to fall into the jargon a lot...just call me out if I do it again, okay?_

The openhearted doggy enthusiasm was starting to mollify Stephen in spite of himself. And in spite of the fact that he was suspecting this Guide of being one of those long-haired hippie granola-crunching West-coast professorial types. _Why were you trying to get in touch with me in the first place? If you want to get on my show, have your publicist talk to our bookers._

 _No, no, nothing like that,_ the wolf assured him. _Actually, I was hoping to study you, if you're willing._

Stephen was almost flattered. His hedgehog allowed its eyes to poke out from between the spines. _Why? I know I'm fascinating, but why exactly?_

The wolf let its tongue loll out in a friendly sort of way. _We've never had any accurate method of measuring a Guide's abilities. Sentinel senses, yes, but empathy is a lot less quantitative, and the most we can do is give rough estimates — "not too strong," "pretty average," that sort of thing. But I heard about your amazing range on the news, and then I got through the grapevine that there was a super-receptive Guide hanging around in the New York area, and there's a chance that if we had any charts for this, you would be off them._

 _Go on,_ said Stephen, now definitely puffing out his chest a little.

 _Well, just think about the potential for research!_ exclaimed the wolf. _If there's anything chemical or hormonal in the body associated with Guide abilities, it would be easiest to identify in you. If it's genetic, your DNA would be a great help in pinpointing the markers. And what if it's learned? We know it's all inborn for Sentinels, but if we could develop a way for other Guides to copy your techniques, it could be revolutionary! I'm sort of below-average myself, so it would have great personal meaning for me._

Stephen squirmed. _I don't need "techniques," sir. All I do is yell at Jon to pay attention, and he does. Have you tried yelling?_

 _No! But this is fascinating stuff,_ said the wolf in all apparent earnestness. _See, this is why we need to meet, so I can do a structured interview and write it all down._

It was tempting. _And what about my Sentinel? How would he be involved?_

_Well, he'd need to be involved, of course, so we can test your abilities with respect to him. But as I understand it, he's pretty average, right? When I want to test a theory on a full Sentinel who's broken a lot of records, Jim's always been very cooperative. It's funny — our studies have found no correlation between the emotional perception of a Guide and the sensory range and abilities of the Sentinel they bond with. You'd think it would be roughly linear, or possibly asymptotic, but —_

_You're doing the word thing again,_ huffed Stephen.

 _Sorry,_ repeated the wolf. _So, what do you say? Would you be willing to negotiate your participation in a case study?_

Stephen's hedgehog had come completely unrolled by now. He picked it up, one hand under its stomach so he wouldn't jab himself, and used one finger to rub its head. _We'll think about it,_ he said at last. _My Sentinel and I, and also his wife, are going through sort of a big transition right now. But we will definitely consider it. Have your people send my people the paperwork._

 _No problem,_ said the wolf. _Look out for a packet from Ranier University. And, Mr. Colbert? Congratulations._

 

~*~

 

The huge shadow-furred puma lashed its tail. It was bigger than Vinette's jaguar, and with an aura of unfamiliarity that made Jon think it wasn't from the New York area.

 _Hey,_ it said in a gruff not-voice. _My Guide is real interested in yours, so he figured I should have a chat with you. For symmetry, I guess. Not sure what he wanted me to say. He's the big talker between us._

 _I can work with that,_ said Jon-the-lynx reasonably. _There's only so much dream-advice a guy can take. You been doing this a while?_

 _Officially, since '96._ The black puma started padding along the dream-jungle path; Jon-the-lynx fell in comfortably beside it. _Senses first came online during a military emergency, got suppressed for five years after, then came back and stuck around when I met Blair. It's a long story._

 _Sounds like it,_ agreed Jon. And, _Thank you for your service._

 _Just doin' my job,_ said the puma. The light was changing; they were approaching a stretch of field. _You want to go for a run or something? It's pretty relaxing when you're noncorporeal._

Granted, as far as Sentinel and relationship issues went, Jon was the most relaxed he'd been in months. And what he had to wake up to in the morning was as heartening as that first morning at Landstuhl had been panic-inducing. But they were only a couple weeks out from the election, the news was starting to talk about an approaching hurricane that would probably need Sentinels all down the coast to help pick through the damage afterward, and who knew what other crises life would choose to throw at him next?

Jon shrugged, inasmuch as lynxes could shrug. _Sure._

The two Sentinels stepped out over the last of the roots and fallen leaves, nodded to each other in companionable silence, and took off.


End file.
